Parent w/Multiple Child records - Slice vs Data

PJMatelli · 06-10-2020 02:35 PM

Hello all,
I have an App where we are tracking accidents that happen in our company. I have a Google Sheet with multiple tabs. There is the Accident Data tab and then I have Witness Information tab and a Corrective Action tab. The last 2 (Witness and Corrective Action) can have multiple records for one Accident Data record. I have ReportID as the common field between the 3 tabs. I am trying to create subforms for the Witness and CorrectiveAction components. I have tested this concept on another app and it works great. I am trying to make it work on this App which has the New Report data referencing a Slice. My sample app doesn’t use a slice. Is it possible that the subform concept doesn’t work with slices?

Thanks in advance…

Steve

I’d expect it to work fine. In what way doesn’t it work?

PJMatelli

I have a tabbed form with many, many tabs. One of the tabs is for Witnesses, I have a separate tab in the Sheet for Witnesses with the ReportID as the link field. In the Witness tab, I have the following fields: ReportID, WitnessName, etc. I would like the Witness tab to show the “new” button for witnesses and have it open the Witness form. I have the slice showing the referenced field for witnesses right after the header for the Witness section of the form. No fields show up. Here is my Ref_Rows info:

and here is my slice info (the Witness section) with the tab on the form.

I can’t image/figure out what I am missing. Thanks!

Steve

In the WitnessInfo table (it appears), in the Ref column that points to the parent report row, set Is a part of? to ON.

PJMatelli

That did it! Thanks so very much, I am not sure I fully understand, but I will research that a bit more. While we are discussing, can you help me understand why the desktop version doesn’t always update? When I was checking my changes, they didn’t appear in the desktop version. So, I was told to go into Chrome in incognito mode to see the desktop version with changes. That works, but I am wondering why we have to do that? Most of our apps will be used on the desktop and a smaller percentage on the mobile/tablet view. Thanks again.

Steve

Changes to the app configuration made in the app editor will only take effect in the running app–whether in a browser or the native app–when the app is synced with a full sync, which occurs when you manually sync, when the app is (re)started (by default), and/or roughly every 30 minutes (by default).

Changes to data within the app need to go through two sync cycles to appear on another instance of the app: first, the changes need to be pushed to the cloud by the device that made the changes, then the changes need to be pulled from the cloud by all other devices. The push to the cloud typically occurs within just a few minutes (by default), or immediately by a manual sync; but the pull from the cloud can take some time and is affected by a variety of factors. A manual sync, though, causes the pull to happen immediately.

Important to be clear on: data changes are not reflected in real time across devices. No user will see another’s changes as they happen, nor without the delays inherent in the syncing process.

So, could all of that explain the behavior you saw?