REF Action not showing even thought source is same table

[Mike_A]

Hi All. I am trying to track down inconsistent Action behavior and wondered if anyone has tips…

I have a table that feeds two slices. And I have two gallery views with the same setup, but each use a different one of the two slices as the source.

Each of the the two slices have the same columns. The first slice has row filter of
[Active]=“TRUE”, and the second slice has row filter of AND([Active]=“TRUE”,KAM_email]=USEREMAIL()). That’s the only difference I can see.

When I access the two views on browser or mobile, the first slice/view shows the related record Action symbol properly.

When I access second slice/view, the data shows properly but the related record Action is missing.

As the “View Ref” actions were system generated, I tried adding another manually, and that showed a second ref action on the first view, but again nothing on the second view.

Anybody have any idea why the Action may not show in the second view? I must be missing something obvious…

[Lynn · Accepted solution]

Hi @Mike What do you have in the Slices actions?

[Mike_A]

OMG @Lynn - that would be funny. I checked everything else so well but can’t remember if I missed the actions selection for the second slice … duh! Will check later and let you know. Feeling a bit stupid!

I really wish there was a way to download exact configurations so i could do a side-by-side compare (like text difference highlighting). Visual inspection is way too error prone. With so many possible configurations, a way to save configuration documentation and compare diffs would be very useful for dummies like me .
You can download the app configurations (APP Documentation section), but the document is very hard to work with without a way for computer quick search and compare. Also, from what I could see, it does not seem to include all configurations for things like Slices and Actions

UPDATE: @Lynn - well… color me embarrassed!
The first slice has actions set to *auto, and the second had actions explicitly defined (which of course did not include the Ref actions I was wanting). The simplest things can really trip you up… Thanks for recommending that!

[Lynn]

@Mike Thats great you got it sorted.

[Steve]

Mike:

I really wish there was a way to download exact configurations so i could have a do a side-by-side compare (like text difference highlighting). Visual inspection is way too error prone. With so many possible configurations, a way to save configuration documentation and compare diffs would be very useful for dummies like me .

This.

[Kirk_Masden]

I remember reading this thread before I had my own issue. It turns out I made the same mistake, even though reading this thread beforehand should have helped me avoid it. Of course, a major cause of my problem was my own inability to apply what I should have learned here to a similar situation that I encountered. Still, if people like @Mike and me, who are not exactly new to AppSheet, can get tripped up by this I think that’s evidence that it would behoove AppSheet to do something to either help people avoid the error in the first place or to discover it more quickly. I’m not exactly sure how the compare diffs would work but I really do think that better debugging tools are needed.

Ref columns used with slices from the same table

I finally figured out what I was doing wrong. It has to do with the slice. When I make actions myself, I know that I have to include them in the slice but it took me a while to figure out that the system generated ref actions also had to be added to the slice by hand. I hope I’ve finally learned my lesson but, for others, it would be great if some method could be found to get the editor interface to automatically assist confused people (like me) with debugging.

For example, a message like “You’ve added a ref action. Would you like it to be include it in such and such slice?” would be nice for beginners – and slow learning old guys like me.