PDF Template Question

[Ryan_Wagner]

Hi. I'm making my first attempt at generating a "work order" via automation...

I found a great post here that helped me setup my Google Doc template, which works perfectly, except I'm having trouble get a Ref column to show up the way I want.

When I enter my Ref column in the template, it generates a list of the related unique IDs rather than the list of previous repairs I was hoping to see:

This is the formula I used for getting the reference:

Is there a way to accomplish what I'm after? 

I'm sure I'll need to provide more info....Thanks for taking a look.

[WillowMobileSys · Accepted solution]

Try using this instead:

<<[Work History][...Name of Column you want...]>>

 Just to explain a bit,  for Ref type columns,  AppSheet will use a column designated as the Label for the table to display the value.  In other words, in the views,  The Ref value (row key) is replaced with the value from the column set as the Row Label.  But this is for display only!!!

The same replacement does not happen any where in AppSheet.  You would need to specifically select the column value you want shown.  The expression I provided above is a shorthand way of inserting a SELECT() expression.

[Ryan_Wagner]

That is helpful context, thank you.

I just gave that a shot and got this error...(The list of repairs for a given vehicle (child records) is what I was hoping to pull in...)

[WillowMobileSys]

There should be NO "dot" in between - <<[Work History][Repair]>>

[Ryan_Wagner]

Ah, nevermind! I took the period out and it is working! Thanks!

[Ryan_Wagner]

It is giving me a less than desirable string of commas, but I can take the good with the bad...

[WillowMobileSys]

That means some of the items in your Ref list have empty values.  I think you can get rid of those using this expression:

<<[Work History][Repair] - LIST("")>>

This is List subtraction, and should remove all empty values from the  Work History list.

[Ryan_Wagner]

I just tried that. It didn't register any errors, but now it returns blank...

On a side note, I just realized that I got my original template from one of your posts, as well as a lot of other great help. Thanks for all the great work!

I can live with the commas, as it seems to be a recurring issue for some folks as far as I can tell...