App Maker deprecated, customers steered to AppSheet

[jcadence]

Google recently announced that we will be depreciating the platform App Maker on January 19th, 2021. You can read more about the official announcement on Goggle’s Blog.

G Suite Updates Blog

Google App Maker will be shut down on January 19, 2021

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If you are a current App Maker customer or know someone who is, we highly recommend sharing this Action Advised document.

If you’re discovering AppSheet for the first time because of this announcement, welcome! A great place to start learning more about AppSheet is this forum, but should you want more actionable information on learning this platform this post is a great place to start.

Should you have any questions or comments about this transition please let us know.

[pravse]

A couple of things:

• Today is a difficult day for the AppMaker customers. A platform they invested time and energy in has been deprecated. So we feel their pain and their concern.

• Let’s do whatever we can to help them. Some of their apps, perhaps even many of their apps, can be built on AppSheet. We have a strong and helpful community here.

I will be posting a message in the AppMaker forum steering them to this thread. I know many of you community members will try to help them get their apps working on AppSheet.

[LeventK]

@praveen
We would be delighted to help and support our new members…C’mon and get them to their new home!

[Sentra_Ventures]

Will Appsheet restore its partner program?

[Mike_A]

@praveen - Thanks as always for focusing on the end user (even if it’s an App Maker user). These transitions are never easy, but this certainly makes clear the confidence in the AppSheet platform and the great team behind it. Looking forward to what comes next!!

[Jonathon]

Exciting news. Happy to help where possible.

[Sentra_Ventures]

The one thing that changed a passing look into a commitment with Appsheet was how ready everyone in the community was to help. Even @praveen patiently answered some of my initial “silly” questions… Ex App Makers will certainly appreciate the comradery here…

[1minManager]

I’ll second the above. Any UK based App Maker users want a chat to discuss what Appsheet can do then please contact me.

Simon@1minManager.com

[Kirk_Masden]

Is some sort of automatic conversion of App Maker apps to AppSheet apps out of the question?

[Igor_Sovcik]

Hi, is appsheet capable of runing custom javascript code?
Is there any option in trial to connect to external database?
Is there any possibility to make custom html/javascript frontend elements?

[LeventK]

@Igor_Sovcik welcome to the AppSheet community…Regarding your query:

Igor_Sovcik:

is appsheet capable of runing custom javascript code?

No directly with JS but AppSheet is Google Apps Script compliant. You can support an AppSheet app with custom GAS via onChage(e) trigger or any GAS code deployed as web-app and integrated to your AppSheet App via custom webhook workflow.

Igor_Sovcik:

Is there any option in trial to connect to external database?

Can you elaborate? What kinda external databases are you querying for?

Igor_Sovcik:

Is there any possibility to make custom html/javascript frontend elements?

Are you referring to creating custom front-end UI/UX elements within an AppSheet app?

[Igor_Sovcik]

LeventK:

Can you elaborate? What kinda external databases are you querying for?

Igor_Sovcik:

We using mysql in GCE

[LeventK]

@Igor_Sovcik
Yes it’s possible to integrate an AppSheet app with MySQL in GCE

[Larry_Reader]

LeventK:

No directly with JS but AppSheet is Google Apps Script compliant. You can support an AppSheet app with custom GAS via onChage(e) trigger or any GAS code deployed as web-app and integrated to your AppSheet App via custom webhook workflow.

Thanks for this. I’m an AppSheet newbie trying to work out how to port my AppMaker apps and this quote seems like a path. What I’m missing is how exactly to run code to say create a new gsuite user which is something I now do with server side google app script via AppMaker interface triggered code. I think I wriggle my way through anything I can find in AppSheet documentation on AppSheet webhook workflow and follow that back to finding how to hook AppSheet apps into server side google app script code?

[Bellave_Jayaram]

You could start here:

How to Integrate Google Apps Script & Trigger with an AppSheet App Tips & Tricks 💡

1 - INTRODUCTION Dear valuable members of the community, This post is my personal long-time promise to @praveen that I’ll write about nearly a year ago but couldn’t be able to keep my promise and spare some time because of our work load as an AppSheet Partner and Developer. Now I have found some time, I decided to write it down. Hope you can find a benefit of this post for your apps and/or projects. Before starting and diving any deeper, I should admit that this requires at least a beginner…

[pravse]

Hi @Igor_Sovcik

Yes you can connect to an external database to build free prototype apps.

Client-side logic is completely declarative — no code (no javascript, no procedural code at all). However, a variety of common UI metaphors are available out of the box.

If you can describe what your AM app does, someone here will likely be able to point you at something similar as a starting point. Thanks

[julien_poirot]

Hi @JCadence
Do you have any information regarding integration of Appsheet in G Suite ?
I mean App Maker was a part of the suite at no extra cost and it is difficult to pay $5 or $10 per user in addition.
Regards

[jcadence]

Hi @Julien_Poirot At this time I don’t have a definitive answer for pricing, but we are hoping to have an answer to you by the end of the week. I’ll be certain to respond once I have this information available.

[pravse]

@Julien_Poirot we announced that for active App Maker G Suite customers, we are providing the AppSheet PRO plan at no extra cost for the lifetime of the G Suite membership. The details are in the App Maker forum.

[MultiTech]

The level of devotion to customer success that @praveen and everybody at the AppSheet team has is unprecedented!

I look forward to seeing the types of apps that people have been making in app maker; I’m sure there’s some unique and challenging scenarios to translate into an AppSheet app, but I’m positive that with the collective skill of the community here we’ll be able to solve any puzzles as they arise.

[Matej]

Hello to you all.
I am a G suite customer who bought it just for App maker.
Invested a few 100€ for training (app maker academy) and google cloud SQL and shared server in order to start working on my application.

My application would be in the end a portal for all farmers in my area where i live (i am a farmer also besides an IT job), to login to the portal and add points of littering on the lands they see, so the farmers can then go to their land and clean it.

Now as the app maker was cheap for 10€ a month for all i’m reluctant now to check other options how to do my application as it was planned.

Automatically it redirects us to appsheet, but it’s not the same as i think i would need to pay per user (or am i?) that logs into the portal and i’m pissed, as this is the second time i bought a google service and they discontinued it (wave was my first).

So please i would be more then thankful if you could tell me if i make a portal application, would my users also need to pay for it to login and access and enter data into it.

I would like to thank you in advance for your support.

Kind regards;
Matej Rozman a former G suite user…

[pravse]

Hi @Matej
For active App Maker G Suite customers, we are providing the AppSheet PRO plan at no extra cost for the lifetime of the G Suite membership. This should ease the transition from App Maker. The details are in the App Maker forum.

[danzapp]

Hi Praveen sorry but I don’t understand what do you mean by Active App Maker G Suite Customers. I developed some applications with Google App Maker for my organization, which is a public administration. Currently these applications are used by about 50 users each logged in with their personal email being able to modify the application data. I was planning a new app which had to have a part visible to all members of the organization in view and search only. We are almost 2500 employees, all within GSuite! I can’t ask for a higher budget, so I wonder if I can do something similar on appsheet while keeping my current spending?

[jcadence]

Hi @danzapp

If your organization is an active user of App Maker as a G Suite customer, you’re entitled to our special Pro Plan. The best to start is going to be completing this quick form which will allow us to validate your App Maker usage, issue your discount code and provide additional getting started information.

[Aleksi]

Hi Matej, does your app need authentication… I mean is the data sensitive?

[Aleksi]

If the data is sensitive and you need be sure that other user’s data is not in other user’s device, you need to use security filters. For that feature, you would need to use Pro plan. You can find prices from www.appsheet.com/pricing

[Matej]

Thank you Aleksi.

This is evident, as i read the documentation and i was thinking of going into pro edition as a first step.

But the only thing missing for me now is if i need to pay 10€ per user (logged in user) that logs to my portal and see and edits their data or is the pricing for a developer user.

Thank you in advance for your support and help:
Matej

[jcadence]

Hi @Matej! If you are a current user of App Maker please reach out to your Google customer service rep. We have a special plan PRO plan available for current App Maker customers transitioning to App Sheet. If you need additional details please don’t hesitate to reach out.

[Aleksi]

It’s the opposite. If you don’t use the app with the Appsheet app (from the mobile device) or Full screen mode with the browser, you don’t need license as an app creator… but your app users need it.

[Matej]

Thank you all. My case is in Google support right now. The issue we have is connectivity, dev. Options with scale, mass external users, Legal… It is a bit complex and sadly some competitors offer us more for the same.
But thx for the details.
Kind regards.

[Fabian_Weller]

Matej:

some competitors offer us more for the same.

Hi @Matej what kind of functions you need are missing in AppSheet?

[Matej]

Well if we are talking regarding options,
the main we are missing is multi-server solution (testing, development, production) and version control.

The other thing that is huge for us is payment by end user, as many platforms you pay for developers or users who edit application, but have no limitations for portal users seeing their data nomather if it’s sensitive or not.

With scale this is more and more evident and eventually if you get lets say a pure profit of 50$ per user per month and you pay 10$ for platform in our case and based on the user that would be migrated from our main structure that is way more we pay now for on premise solution.
Bigger businesses stay away from those models as we do.

But i hope to sort this out with google, as to be honest your platform looks nice and it’s even easier to develop as it’s on appmaker or other competitors and that’s a bonus for us as we might deliver apps much faster to the market, so we are hoping for a positive feedback from google to get things done.

Kind regards.

[pravse]

@Matej feel free to send me a message (praveen@appsheet.com) with details on who you are engaged with on the Google side. I can try to follow up. Thanks

[jcadence]

Hi everyone!

We just published a great resource to help answer a few common questions and get you started on your App Maker to AppSheet transition. we will continue to update this webpage as more information become available.

solutions.appsheet.com

Transition Guide

App Maker to AppSheet Transition Guide

[Abdulrahman_Zak]

@JCadence I submitted the forum and I am waiting for the Approval. How long does it take? As I want ASAP to use AppSheet as my running Appmaker have issues and I want to create new App

[jcadence]

Hi @Abdulrahman_Zaki thank you for reaching out. If you check your email inbox you should find a response to your earlier inquiry.

[Alex_Ross]

I’ve tried this app and it seems a bit confusing for me

[Rafael_ANEIC-PY]

Hello @Alex_Ross, you might want to start by taking the short appsheet course on udemy to get you started, after that you can search just about everything in this forum or the help documentation (if you search SELECT() appsheet on google for example it gets you straight there), there’s also a lot of content in youtube about appsheet.

But again, my advice is that you start here:

Udemy course

If you see anything related to “workflows” you can ignore it tho, that has been changed.

[Alex_Ross]

Thanks for sharing. Gonna check out the link later

[Lwm]

Hello,

following the future switch from Google G Suite to Google workspace, I think I will lose my access to Appsheet.
Is it possible to switch from the custom subscription (not billed when replacing AppMaker with Appsheet) to a core appsheet subscription (which I will pay of course) without losing my applications?
Thank you in advance for your answers.
Regards.