Help creating a PDF that was not correctly generated by a workflow

[Frank_McGee]

Hey folks, looking for some creative ideas. I have several apps that generate PDF versions of data collected in a row when the row is saved (and then are linked to in a file column for users). I noticed a couple of days ago that these apps weren’t correctly generating PDFs, and found out today it was due to a change that was deployed on 12/2/2020 that affected apps using Team Drives. Sounds like a fix is in the works to correct the problem moving forward, but I’ve got about a weeks worth of entries that are missing the PDF “hard copies” that users highly value.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a creative way to have appsheet generate these files after the fact for the rows that are missing them?

Thanks

[MultiTech · Accepted solution]

Hello @Frank_McGee

Going back and refilling data after the fact can be a real pain, especially if you didn’t build your app with that functionality in mind.

Thankfully, AppSheet is designed for rapid deployments and updates - so adding this functionality into your app is possible.

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You said you had a file column that housed the link to the PDF; are there values in these fields?

If not, you can easily use that to key off of to tell which records need the file generated for or not.

If they DO have data, then it’s a grind my friend.

• You need to go through each record and check and see if the file link works
  • if it does, the file is there;
  • if it doesn’t, the file is NOT there and that record needs to be added to the list of ones to update.

To make it easier to flag records that need to be updated:

• I would add a column to your table specifically to hold this flag
• I would create an action to either set or clear the flag (this way I can easily add a record to the list with a push of a button)

The final bit of the puzzle is to then to modify your PDF generation workflow (or just create a special one for this instance and delete it after it’s done) so that it can run on the records you flagged.

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This is an inevitable fact of being a software developer, even a no-code Citizen Developer: things will at some point not go as planned and work will be needed to be put in to get everything back on track.

Just be thankful you didn’t have to deal with recovery mode.

[Frank_McGee]

Thanks, I had come to much the same conclusion. Unfortunately the column with the link is an app formula that functioned correctly, so as you say, it’s a grind going through and finding the ones that weren’t created. The apps that were generating these PDFs allow adds, but not updates, so my plan is to create a version of my workflow that fire with updates, and give just my username update permission, and then make some innocuous change in a comment field to get the workflow to fire.

[MultiTech]

Frank_McGee:

make some innocuous change in a comment field to get the workflow to fire

I’ve put together an In-App guide that will walk you through adding a system into your app that allows you to fire off your workflows with an action button push.

Introducing A New Resource: In-App Guides Tips & Tricks 💡

The following guides were published and made public on 4/1/2020: Avatar Builder This guide shows how to quickly implement the avatar builder first introduced to the community by Tsuji Koichi How To Import Gravatars Automatically This guide shows how to pull the Gravatar for an email RoboHash Images This guide shows how you can use the RoboHash service to pull in temporary images as stand-ins (including monsters, robots, kittens, etc.) Add GeoFencing This guide shows how to add Ge…

Look for for the guide named:

Introducing A New Resource: In-App Guides

Trigger Workflow Manually

• This guide shows how to trigger a workflow with the push of an action button