Uploading and accessing files/pictures between two apps (Secure+Public plan combination)

Hello,
I am building two apps, one with Secure plan, one with Public plan that use the same (Google Sheets) tables and data (from Drive).

Because of multiple plans I needed to transfer the public app to another account.

There I ran into problem. As for records in Google Sheets tables everything is brilliant. However, I cannot find a way to share files and pictures between those two apps, because it insist to upload files/pictures only into the account ownerโ€™s Drive. Thus when I upload something from my Public app, I canโ€™t access it in Secure and vice versa.

I tried with folder sharing in Drive, but donโ€™t know how to direct the app to read/write from there. With using the shared folder name as Image/File folder path for the File/Image column it just created a new folder with the same name to the root and didnโ€™t point into shared one.

Also I tried with Account Sources. Added the Secure plan related account under there and created a copy of the Public app based on that source - still same result.

I did read about using Google Team Drive, but I donโ€™t have that option. Also going for Enterprise plan to perhaps have both apps on the same account is price wise overkill for our business and what the app is for. Currently my problem is caused just by the fact that I need to have apps on separate accounts - they worked perfectly on one account.

Any ideas to work around this issue?
I would be very thankful!

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Steve
Platinum 4
Platinum 4

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Aurelien
Google Developer Expert
Google Developer Expert

Hii @Mari_Ermann

You may want to use a Team Drive instead of a oneโ€™s personal Google Drive.
Here are more informations:

Thank you for the suggestion, but sadly that is not an option. We donโ€™t have Google Workspace, which in this case would mean extra 2 x 12$ per month just for a shared folder (shared folders option starts from Business Standard plan). We currently donโ€™t need any of the other functionality that comes with the package. Seems very forced, this.

Also reading this article: https://help.appsheet.com/en/articles/4474114-understanding-cloud-object-stores
Where is stated: "If the table data source is a Google Sheet, the image and file data is stored on Google Drive in a folder that is collocated with the Google Sheet. "

Would make sense to me that if my Public app uses the Sheet in the location of my Secure app then the files and pictures are stored in the Drive where the Sheet is located. But it doesnt work so!

Hi @Mari_Ermann

Yes, this is a limitation, but it all depends on perspective: from what I understand, AppSheet focuses on โ€œinternal enterprise usersโ€. Because most of time the users will have a business standard plan or similar, this doesnโ€™t really look forced to me. I face similar concern when it comes to scanning, which is the only feature I need for some apps.
As I said, this is just about perspective

About your point:

If your concern is about accessing same data, you could use Google Apps Script (GAS) in order to update both โ€œroot folder contentโ€.
This may come tricky, as dealing with additions and deletions will come hard to manage.
However, assuming your public app wonโ€™t delete any data, that could be an excellent workaround.

If you are familiar with Google Apps Script and feel like you are ready to spend some time on it, here are some useful posts thus you could get some inspiration/information:

Thank you for the reply. I am not familiar with GAS, but I guess itโ€™s about time to get acquainted. So I will look into it.

Since we are using Office 365 solutions for business and have some enterprise account there, any idea if that could be of any help if I could move all my data and files and then have both of my apps working with that source? I canโ€™t just test it out, because I need to go through some levels of approval to get our IT to allow the O365 to be connected to AppSheet. So if that could be a viable solution, I could try that as well.

No idea.
I ping @Steve , he may have the answer for it, or who to ask that.

Steve
Platinum 4
Platinum 4

Thank you!! That did solve it! I previously never tried moving the Sheet to a new shared folder.

Hi all, (and @Steve)

So I have a similar setup where we have a "backend" admin app and then a client-facing app that shares the same database ( we use postgres for row data) as well as the same file store (AWS S3). Records are shared and can be accessed by both apps just fine as expected - yet what I just ran into is the fact that each app uses it's own top-level folder in the data store for saving files. Is there any way of having these two apps use the same folder in S3? A simple symlink would have worked really well but as we all know, that's not a concept in S3 so I'm looking for other options here.

Solving my own problem here but recording for others - you can very easily use the same folder by setting the default app folder under App -> Info -> Properties -> Default app folder

Well done!

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