February 25, 2022

[lizlynch]

Deployment Time: 1:27 PM PST

Features & enhancements

Item	Description
Enhancement	When creating a new format rule currently there are no pre-selected values for columns to format. With this change label columns are selected. This enhancement has been deployed to 50% of free users. For example:

Bug fixes

None.

Rollout changes

Item	Description
Feature/Bug Fix	New Copy App modal We're introducing a re-skin of the current Copy App modal to look more similar to the rest of AppSheet. This also includes a fix so that Team Sources appear under the available data sources to copy to. New: Deployed to all users. Previous: Deployed to 100% of free users and 75% of paid users.
Enhancement	When sharing with a user who already has access to the app, the newly shared permissions, user role and app version will override the current ones. This enhancement has been deployed to 50% of free users. New: Deployed to all users. Previous: Deployed to 100% of free users and 75% of paid users.

Preview announcements

The AppSheet Preview program lets app creators try out new app features that are not yet fully supported. Learn how to participate in the AppSheet preview program for app client features.

• No new preview features were released today.

What's currently available in the Preview program?

Item	Description
Feature	Table view Table View now supports freezing the first column while scrolling horizontally. For details, see Freezing the first Column of a Table View - in Preview Program.
Feature	Chart Editor App Creators can now make use of our new chart editor and the new and improved charts it can create. Learn more.
Feature	Detail views Rich text formatting is now available in Detail views. For details, see this announcement in the community.

[Hugo_Cesar]

Item	Description
Enhancement	When creating a new format rule currently there are no pre-selected values for columns to format. With this change label columns are selected. This enhancement has been deployed to 50% of free users.

Not sure it is a good idea. I think its a lot easier to remember to select wanted collumns than to unselect unwanted ones.

[alphacp]

I tend to agree with Hugo. I am not sure how AppSheet could reasonable guess what we want to apply format rules to. It seems like a change that serves little purpose but perhaps you have the analytics to support this. 

[macastan]

@Hugo_Cesar @alphacp Thank you for the feedback, I wanted to provide some extra context to this change. We are currently working on improving the warnings and errors our users see and avoid the errors as much as possible. One of the highest warnings with no resolutions happens when a New Format Rule has no columns preselected (only a table preselected). This change just defaults to preselecting the label for now. 

We had a conversation around whether we are making the columns what people want and not just making the error go away? I don't think we're 100% sure by any means, just like when we have a default value in a dropdown.. it's not always the best one, it just defaults to something. In this case, adding a format rule to label columns makes sense. It is not smart, but it gets a user to a starting point that also removes any possibility of saving something broken.

But what if saving something broken was helping people realize that there was something they needed to update, instead of silently doing something wrong for them and having them not discover it was wrong until much later? Valid point.. It already has a low resolution rate (so clearly it's not triggering users to go fix it) and it's just adding noise to their info/error tab. I think having defaults, in general, is a good way to get things started. It still only takes one click to select the right column and de-select all other columns, in case the creator does not want the labels, just like when nothing was pre-selected.

cc: @Arthur_Rallu 

[Hugo_Cesar]

@macastan , thank you for your feedback!

The problem is that if you have a table with a lot of collumns and/or actions, you do not have an overview of everything that is selected.

In my case, when I have a format rule not applied to any collumn is not because I created it and didn't know how it works. It is because I deleted the action/collumn it was applied to and forgot about the format rule - and yes, sometimes I do not check the warnings right away to remember me about the format rule.

I always have a warning symbol (little yellow dot on the side menu) telling me things that I know, but choose to ignore (see below). The yellow warning symbol do not get my attention anymore because it's always there and I can't make it go away. Speaking for myself, if it had a "ignore" button for the unwanted warnings, I would always check the warnings when I see the yellow dot to solve errors that I should not ignore.

Perhaps another solution for this should not be a automated pre-selection prone to create other problems, but a visual change that allows the user to have a better overview of what is being formated and what is not. Perhaps two lists, one of unselect and other of selected collumns (see below as reference).