Guide on How To Create a Community Post

[LeventK (Levent Kulacoglu)]

Dear valuable members and users,

For a long time I’m seeing a lot of multiple and concurrent posts, posts like novels seeming to aim the Pulitzer Price, exactly the same questions by the same user but paraphrased/re-phrased etc. Being a dedicated community member and an AppSheet developer who is reading around 2.5K posts per day, I urged myself to tip on some good advice and best practice BEFORE posting something in the community:

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#1 - APPSHEET DOCUMENTATION

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AppSheet has a very good help documentation vested to the users and the community. Kudos to @Steve, these pages are very well documented and updated time to time. Please search and read those docs well, experiment the expressions and techniques described within, make your hands dirty, pour some sweat first before posting anything.

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#2 - APPSHEET SAMPLE APPS

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AppSheet has a very resourcefull SAMPLE APPS page. You can check this page out to see provided a similar app fits your requirements. If one of them deems fit, than it’s a very good opportunity to copy that app and develop your own onto it rather than starting from scratch.

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#3 - HOW TO BUILD AN APP

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AppSheet offers very good resources to learn how to build an app with AppSheet. I may humbly advise to start with these and then come-up with questions.

How to create a no-code app

You can also check Udemy for free course as well

Free Mobile App Design Tutorial - Create Business Applications with AppSheet

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#4 - USE K.I.S.S. AT ALL TIMES

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There is absolutely no need to create a post like a novel bespangled with over 10-15 images etc. Believe me neither Google nor AppSheet will nomenee you for the Pulitzer price. There are very talented and experienced developers and community members who can catch what you are talking about even from a single screenshot. Use K.I.S.S. technique at all times and try to explain the major problem without bunch of irrelevant details.

Bear in mind that, no one in the community has the ability to foresee the future nor we have the magic sphere to see what you have built, your sheet structure, your table schema etc. Provided you are asking something technical, try to support the question with 1 or 2 screenshots.

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#5 - AVOID CREATING CONSEQUENT AND/OR CONCURRENT POSTS

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I notice consequent and concurrent posts on the same issue repeatedly. When you post a question, please be patient to receive a reply for it. Provided your question is not replied somehow, there might be several reasons for that. Re-posting the same questions with the same header or just with switching words again’n’again does not guarantee that you will be receiving faster replies at all. Besides no any one is urged to reply your post. If someone knows a solution, or wants to reply, he and she ultimately will. No worries; creating a reply under your original/initial post will already be noticed in the dashboard. Please save your time and save ours as well!

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#6 - SEARCH THE COMMUNITY POSTS

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AppSheet Community is one of the largest knowledgebase you can find regarding AppSheet developement. Please get a habit of using the magnifying glass on upper right corner and search for possible posts, solutions, tips&tricks etc. regarding your problem before posting yours. Please also pay attention that, even when you are creating a new post, on the preview pane right hand side, the discource offers you possible posts where your typed content is matching. So use it!!

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#7 - DISTINGUISH APPSHEET SUPPORT FROM PRO-BONO

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I got a severe feedback from a member, telling that “he is paying AppSheet to get this support”. Please distinguish the services between Official AppSheet Technical Support whom can always be reached via support@appsheet.com and Pro-bono Community Services. We are all here on voluntary basis, our acts are totally pro-bono, we are not paid at all by AppSheet. We are all here because we love to share and help people, that’s all. So please do not treat any one in the community that he/she is obliged to help. Bear in mind that no one in the community is your child to be yelled at when someone is not giving what you asked or required. Please be gentle, kind and nice!

Thanks for reading and consideration.

[GreenFlux (GreenFluxLLC)]

@LeventK

#7 - DISTINGUISH APPSHEET SUPPORT FROM PRO-BONO

I got a severe feedback from a member, telling that “he is paying AppSheet to get this support” . Please distinguish the services between Official AppSheet Technical Support whom can always be reached via support@appsheet.com and Pro-bono Community Services .

I see this a lot, as well. It’s a small percentage of users, but it’s still very discouraging to those of us who volunteer our time here to help others for free.

@LeventK, you’re one of the top contributors to this forum. The vast majority of us all appreciate what you and others bring to the community. Keep up the great work, my friend!

[Marc_Dillon]

Thanks @LeventK, great guide. Something like that has been on my mind to make for a long time now!

[Lynn]

@LeventK
Thank you for this post. Been thinking the same.

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

Excellent guidance from a senior guide in the community @LeventK.

My humble suggestions below:

Over the years the AppSheet team and community members have created some excellent reference material. I believe many interesting solutions and excellent help articles and sample apps are available.

Whenever a new member joins the community, we anyway get a notification from the community platform. While responding to the first few posts of a new member, we, who have been around in the community for some time can share this @LeventK’s post and a few similar theme posts referred below. I believe it will help the new community member in faster onboarding of his AppSheet journey and community participation.

https://www.appsheet.com/Support
Search by a keyword such as say 'actions", “references”, “table view” and one will get many relevant help articles and sample apps.

AppSheet Training Resources & Useful Links

AppSheet is a “no code” platform which makes app building a relatively quick and easy thing… once you have your head around a few basics. If you’re like me you’ll probably dive right in and start building without reading this stuff and end up wasting a great deal of time going in circles. Trust me, if you can manage it, take a couple of days to go through this stuff first. The time you loose up-front will easily be made up later… Not exhaustive and in no particular order, here a…

About the Resources category

The resources category is compiled list of content to help support your app creation journey. Types of content you’ll find here Office Hours Education resources and lists Creator submitted sites and videos. This category does not replace the Tips & Tricks category, but rather it is meant to help surface content that is often buried or lost. Have ways we can improve this area? Let us know below!

If a new member posts in non -English language.

Non-English AppSheet Content

Hi All, Trying something a little different today. I know for many of you, English is not your first language and it had provided some difficulty when you first learned the platform. Because of this, many of you have created or found additional resources in alternate languages to either learn the platform or share information with other users in your region. If you are someone that has created a resource site for learning AppSheet in a language other than English, I would highly encourage you t…

[LeventK (Levent Kulacoglu)]

@Suvrutt_Gurjar
Thanks for this valuable contribution and support my friend, appreciated.

[Lynn]

Just in case new app makers haven’t noticed one of the easiest places to search when working in the editor and emulator is the little search box bottom left.

[Lucinda_Mason]

@LeventK Thank you so much for putting this together. It would have been so helpful to me at the beginning of my AppSheet journey. I hope it has been marked to stay at the top of the Tips&Tricks section.

[AnanthaPad (Anantha Padmanabhan)]

Don’t know how to post in this forum.

Anyway, I’m a noob and planning my first app.

The following how to help needed.

How to generate a running serial number for each row in a form.
How to display this number back to the user once they submit.
Allow update by fetching data only for the given serial number.

Thanks.

AnanthaPad

[rmsmeltz (Ryan Smeltz)]

Shoutout to @Marc_Dillon & @Steve. They’ve been a huge help while I sit over here banging my head against the wall.

[Aurelien (Codergo)]

Hi @LeventK

I allow to make a humble contribution to this thread, on suggestion from @Suvrutt_Gurjar.
You may want to integrate it in your first post ?
It’s more a how-to-do than a how-to-think-and-behave though.

For people who are willing to share expressions, indicate the tip to enclose their expressions with that:

and indent as well.

So, for short comparison, this:
IF(AND(condition1,condition2), resultTrue, resultFalse)
would become:

IF(
  AND(
    condition1,
    condition2
  ), 
  resultTrue, 
  resultFalse
)

Thank you for consideration, and many thanks to the community !