Hi there Appsheet comunity! Not persistent b...

[Joan_Duran]

Hi there Appsheet comunity!

Not persistent but EDITABLE virtual columns:

I don’t know if somebody has already asqued for this new functionality. I did a search and I didn’t find that.

Sometimes we do need some input from the user which is no required to be stored in a gsheet or database just to get some info and do some calculations which will be stored in just one cell/database field.

For example knowing how often do they need to know about you, to fire a workflow rule to send one email:

• when (daily, weekly, monthly… ) - frequence (number) This both input fields generate one output: - milliseconds

(every 3 days=> 10006060243)

So I just need to store one computed field instead of three.

Is there any chance to have not persistent Virtual columns which let users input data on them?

Thank you

[pravse]

HI Joan, what you need is some kind of “temp variable” in a form. We don’t have this mechanism. I can see the value of it, but no good alternative at the moment.

[Aleksi_Alkio]

Could you create a simple variable table and then read your values from there?

[Joan_Duran]

@praveen I will need to wait but this could improve the performance because less data will need to be saved on the backend. Thank you

[Joan_Duran]

@Aleksi_Alkio Thanks but I don’t get your point. I do not need to save the data nor read values from there, just I need to ask to the user some values (which I won’t need to store anymore) to do some calculation and just store the output not the input

[pravse]

@Joan_Duran, this will probably not make much of a performance difference. Because the row is going to get written anyway, and a couple more values being written with it are usually not a big deal. Most of the time is the latency in waiting for the store/sheet to respond and it is usually not impacted by a few more or less cells being updated in the same row.

[Joan_Duran]

@praveen agree from the row point of view but what about from the sheet point of view or the whole book?

In my particular case it is just two cells more per row in one sheet but still if you have a lot of rows… the time retrieving the information, sending and storing/displaying it on the terminal could become important. All adds up to the final figure, don’t you agree?

This ‘Form temp variable’ as you mentioned above offers us the ability to design/create the apps which work with big amounts of data to minimize the data stored/sent/retrieved from/to the backend.

Thank you

[Aleksi_Alkio]

@Joan_Duran I was thinking like this. When the user adds a value, after saving the value you could convert that value with the convert rule you have in your variable table. You can do that with an action.