We developed an app for the use by the public and had planned on only posting the link when we activate and plan to open evacuation centers. Now I’m toying with the idea of having the app available all the time, but in order to do this I would need to disable the “form” until we activate.
What is the easiest way to do this? I want them to know about the form so they return to the app to complete it so I didn’t want to completely remove it from the home page. If I create a confirmation message that says “this form is only available during …” is there a way to then prevent the form from opening?
Thoughts? Advice is appreciated. Thanks
First, there obviously needs to be a way to “known” when activation is done so you can “enable” the form. Assuming you have a Y/N column, [Activated?], here’s how I would handle this.
Since the standard way to indicate “disabled” is by displaying items in grey, I would create a version of the form image that’s grey.
If the [Activated?] column is “N”, then show the greyed image and DO NOT ALLOW the navigation to the FORM.
If “Y”, then show green image and allow normal navigation to FORM.
Oh, and if you want to be able to TELL them they need to do something to Activate the form, do this with the Onboarding view!
In the Evac Centers view there is a status - open, closed, full. By default these will be set to closed until we activate. Would that work even if the evac center list is a different table?
Just to tag along.
I like the grey icon image idea, that’s a good one.
Then instead of using a single action as the gallery view event action (I bet you have it set to a navigation action right now) - instead use a composite action.
This way you can put several actions in stack to run when someone taps the gallery. If you include conditions on the actions for when they should or should not run, you can create incredibly complex navigation behavior - with all kinds of checks and things.
Also, if you wanted to display a message on the greyed out form - to let them know it’s possible to fill out and they need to come back or what not - you could include an alert action (as I call them).
The basic setup is you create an action that does nothing, but include the alert message - so when the action fires off, the alert pops up, but since the action does nothing… nothing happens when they confirm/continue.
Two ways to set this up:
If I change [Name] (that has a value of “Matt”) to [Name] = “Matt” - no edit has been made… but if you turn on the confim you get a pop up.
Hope it helps
I’ve never heard the term composite action - what is that?
The group actions - where you create a stack of actions to run.
The technical name is “Composite Action” - I’ve been making videos so I’m trying to get my vernacular right.
Here’s an example of a menu action I have in an app.
So by including a fall back that always runs, then stacking conditional actions on top, I can ensure that something will always happen - and if I do the logic right it will also always be what I’m expecting.
Ah - ok thanks for the explanation. Yes that is what I’ve done. Each icon has an action and then all the actions are grouped for the gallery view.
All good ideas. The only comment I have to make is to use Pop-Ups VERY sparingly! I can tell you from experience, users get annoyed with pop-ups very quickly.
Can you help figure out how to “trigger” the activation? Is there a way to use the status col from another table?
How do you currently know if something haas been activated or not?
From the evac center list. When the decision is made to open the evac centers the status is changed from closed to open-accepting evacuees. The form has a drop-down for residents to select their evac center and this drop down is populated from that list. Only the open ones show.
But obviously “closed” has another meaning as well or you probably wouldn’t have asked the question “how to trigger activation”?
My recommendation is to have a dedicated column for [Activated?]. Initially set to “N”, once activation has happened then set it to “Y”. You can also have the option to “de-activate” at any time, regardless of status or state.
Storage is cheap these days so having extra columns, even they don’t do much, is NOT a big deal.
Think of support as well as users usage of the app. If you ever need to be able to determine if “activation” actually happened or some other error occurred, you’ll have a column to tell you immediately.
If you try to use an already existing column that has another meaning (e.g. Status) then as soon as the state changes, you loose the information that “activation” happened or not.
Bottom line, I would suggest to never mix multiple meanings into a single column. It often creates headaches later.
I hope this makes sense!!
That makes sense. What table should I add the activated column to?
I have a table for the menu/gallery, the evac center list table, and then the actual evacuation record table that collects all the form data.
And it doesn’t sound like this should be a virtual column. Is that accurate?
Never mind. I went back to re-read the comments to find this in response to how you know if something is activated or not.
I gather from this that you are activating centers. So I need to ask two different questions.
What does active/activate mean? How does it differ from closed?
I assume there are several Evac Centers. So, which one triggers the enabling of “Form”?
To determine whether to link to the form or not, can I create a virtual column in the table that the menu is created on that checks the status column of the evac center table and if any evac center status is set to open then the form can be live (green), if not then the form is disabled (grey)?
If that is possible I will need some help figuring out that expression.
Okay so I’m taking it that you have a slice of “Activated Evac Centers” right?
What you need now is a way for the app to know where someone is at?
You said this way public based yes? So people are not logging in I take it.
We need a way to be able to tell the app (The current user is at “this” location) - then we can see if that location is activated or not.
Geofencing? Is that an option? Do you have geolocations for each evac center?
we aren’t using user location. and i don’t have a slice for activated evac centers - instead using data validity (SORT(SELECT(Gen Pop Evac Center List[EvacCenter], [Status]=”Open Accepting Evacuees”)) - which works well for what we’ve done so far.
I think I will try to add an “activated” field to the menu table and see what I can do with that.
Were you able to remove if from the list in your attempts at this?
The form option I mean - were you able to remove that from the options shown already? Have you figured that part out?
I added an “activated” column and changed the action from just [Item]=Form to AND([Item]=Form, [Activated]=Yes) and this prevents the form from opening.
How would I swap out the images though?
You could create an additional column that holds the greyed out image - then another that switches between the two depending on the status - and use that as the label for the table.
I’ve never attempted a “switch” before. I’ll try it.
It doesn’t seem Smartsheet works well with 2 image attachments in the same row. I tried to add another column as mentioned but it essentially made the app unrunnable.
So what exactly are you activating?
Your initial image showed “Form” at the same level as “Evac Centers”. Your comment was…
This made me think you are activating for the user. Is that not the case?
no, sorry, county activation (opening evac centers).
How does one user from one county receive data different from a user in another county?
If I’m in County A - you’d want me to see Count A’s information. How is that happening in the app right now?
I’m not sure I understand your question. This has been created just for our county.
I think the reason for the “user in county” question is an attempt to understand how activation works.
I’ve been thinking about how this might work in your app and will venture a guess. Tell me how close I am!!
So…how close was I???
Very close. Post Hurricane Irma the decision was made we open all for an incident instead of a tiered approached but you outlined it well.
Here is where I’ve ended up. Clicking “no” or “pre reg form” doesn’t do anything but take users to home page. Would be nice to have a gray image but I may not be able to make that happen.
I’ve never even heard of Smartsheet before joining this community, so I can’t help in that realm. But in Excel, I use relative image paths of “/Images/ImageName.png”. Doing that allows me to also do things like:
CONCATENATE("/Images/", [ColumnOfSomeSort],".png")
If you can also use relative pathways instead of direct attachments to the sheet, this may be easier than any other way.
Do you store your images in the cloud in order to use them?
Yeah. I use an Excel sheet on OneDrive.
If you store the value as a file name, the image or document must be stored in your cloud file system, not on your own computer!
How were you able to display and text in this arrangement?
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