Data Loss occuring periodically in app

[WillA108]

Hello!
So I am attempting to switch my water delivery company over to paperless.
I’ve been using app sheet so the drivers can enter the deliveries so I don’t have to do it myself manually.
We have been using it for well over a year, and we have had some issues in the past with the files corrupting, I figured out eventually that this was because I didn’t have a unique identifier for each row and have since fixed that issue.
I decided this week to try to have one of the drivers go completely paperless, and for the reason the entire first half of his day is missing now.
There are 2 columns the driver fills in; how many bottles of water he delivered and how many empty bottles he returns.
Me and one other person often have the workbook open that contains all of the information for the app as we are updating customers or doing other things with it. The driver will try to sync at the end of the day and he will get a message that he is unable to sync(because we have the file open), so we get him to text us and we close it and all is well.

I recently ticked the option in Behavior> Offline/Sync for Automatic updates as we had some data loss occur previously, and this seemed to be periodically adding the changes to the workbook.
I also have the Delayed Sync and Sync on Start option ticked.

Any direction as to what the problem may be would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers

[Steve · Accepted solution]

WillA108:

Me and one other person often have the workbook open that contains all of the information for the app as we are updating customers or doing other things with it.

That’s your problem. Only AppSheet should be modifying the worksheets.

[WillA108]

I kind of thought it was… the route (day) before had no issues.
But on yesterdays route I added a customer in the middle of the day and told the driver to sync… obviously it synced with the blanks that we had on our end as we hadn’t received his numbers yet.

So, my question; will we be safe to make updates on other days other than the day the driver is currently using? My feeling is yes, and I sure hope so. I have 3 separate identical apps which divide up 21 different routes between the 3 different drivers, all connected to the same workbook.

[Steve]

If you’re using an Excel spreadsheet, there really is never a safe time or way to have it open in Excel and to use it with the app. Excel spreadsheets are not well designed for sharing.

If you’re using a Google Sheets spreadsheet, it should be safe to work on worksheets (tabs) the app doesn’t use at all, or that aren’t in active use.

[WillA108]

Forgot to reply to you instead of just posting and it wont let me post what I said so here it is:
Would a google sheets spread sheet update live?(on the google sheets end)

[Steve]

WillA108:

Would a google sheets spread sheet update live?

Yep. All users with the Google Sheets spreadsheet open see changes in real time.

[WillA108]

Would you folks ever consider a paid service, or perhaps there is a way where the info tied to the unique ID is stored in some kind of cloud service and at a pre-set time(ie Midnight) it syncs to the spread sheet?

[Ferret]

How about a second Google sheet with a scheduled workflow/automation copy/pasting records at the desired time?