Workflow only app?

[Ethan_Hildebran]

Is it possible to create an app that just runs workflows? In my current app I am using a workflow to send an email notification. Could I create an app that watches a table and sends an email notification when a new row is created?

[MultiTech]

Workflows are only triggered by actual app events happening on a device, Reports on the other hand are scheduled things.

You could create an app that has nothing but a ton of reports. At most you can create one report to run every hour - but you could create multiples of those, each assigned a specific time, so theoretically you could have as many as you wanted.

If you created an app with nothing but reports (of course the data has to be tied into the app just like a normally functioning app would, otherwise things might not present properly in the email) and marked it as deployed - it would start sending out reports.

You wouldn’t have to ever open the app for it to do it’s thing.

But this would run on the schedule, and you could also simply include these reports in your actual app people are using - no need for a separate app.

[Ethan_Hildebran]

thanks @MultiTech_Visions. My goal is to try to reduce the amount of computation running in the app that my technicians are using in the field with hopes of achieving faster sync times. I was hoping that a workflow only app could take over some of the burden. Unfortunately, reports won’t work for my use-case as I need (near) real-time firing of the notification email. Possibly something to add to the AppSheet development wish-list? I’m curious to know what @praveen thinks?

[Aleksi]

One way is if you trigger another “slave” app with a webhook. Webhook can trigger the Workflow.

[Ethan_Hildebran]

that’s interesting @Aleksi … the “slave” app could be an AppSheet app right? Do you think this would improve performance (i.e., sync time)?

[Aleksi]

Correct. It depends what you can move away from the master app.

[pravse]

Of course we can do what @Ethan_Hildebrand is asking for. That’s what the REST API and the Zapier connector are for.

Listen to the data source using Zapier, and when a change occurs, push that to the AppSheet app (the mid-tier workflow layer) via the REST API.

Change workflows are triggered by data changes. These could occur on a device or they could occur in some external service that informs AppSheet via the REST API.

[Ethan_Hildebran]

Thanks @praveen, @Aleksi , and @MultiTech_Visions… this will be an interesting experiment. I’ll update this thread with results once I’ve tested.

[Ethan_Hildebran]

@praveen, @Aleksi, @MultiTech_Visions Hi All, One additional question - does AppSheet have a Microsoft flow connector (similar to the Zapier connector)? My institution provides an O365 account with MS Flow, so if we could use that we’d save ourselves some money (not having to create a paid Zapier account).

[pravse]

@Ethan_Hildebrand no Flow connector out of the box. But it should be possible to integrate via a Webhook. You’d have to do a little more work to configure it correctly. See https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/call-flow-restapi/