I am experiencing two unexpected behaviors wi...

Arpit_Kumar · 12-21-2018 04:00 PM

I am experiencing two unexpected behaviors with a table I’ve added with the source as a Google Calendar.

With any entries, I create/update on the table, the Time set in not in the correct time zone. So for eg. I am in India and setting the time for 12:00PM results in the event actually being scheduled at 6.30AM which exactly corresponds to Indian Standard Time (GMT+05:30). This happens with the locale of the table being set as either US or India.
I have an Appointments table which has two fields: CalenderID - set as a Ref to the Google Calendar Table CaseID - set as a Ref to my Cases table.

As a result, I have a Related Appointments List in my Cases Detail View. So this way I am able to create a New Appointment from within my Cases Detail View. For creating a new Appointment I have two inputs: CaseID and CalenderID. The Calendar ID field being a Reference field allows me to create a new one. This takes me to the Form view of the Google Calendar table where I create a new Calender event. This works just as expected and the new Appointment appears correctly on my Related Appointments Inline View but only for few seconds after which it disappears from the list. This happens because the CalendarID field gets a new UniqueID which differs from its intial value at the time of its creation. This breaks the reference and I get a yellow exclamation mark against the CalenderID field as it does not exist. Then if I edit this Appointments entry by associating the CalendarID again with the entry for the Calendar event I just created, the reference is reestablished. This is an undesirable behavior - It looks like AppSheet assigns the CalendarID a temporary unique value which is later updated by Google Calendar.

Can anyone please explain how should I go about solving these two issues? Or is it a bug and the AppSheet team needs to fix it?

Steven_Coile

“If you are seeing the wrong Date, Time, or DateTime format on your mobile device or browser, make sure your mobile device’s locale or your browser’s language setting is correct.” Apps Using Dates, Times, and DateTimes help.appsheet.com

Steven_Coile

See also: Locale Support in AppSheet help.appsheet.com

Harry2

@Arpit_Kumar Regarding the broken reference, are you using an App Formula or an Initial Value to generate the ID? If you’re using an App Formula, you will need to use an Initial Value instead. To see why this is the case, please read this article:

help.appsheet.com - App Formulas and Initial Values App Formulas and Initial Values help.appsheet.com

Arpit_Kumar

@Harry I think you have absolutely misunderstood the problem. I am not generating the ID. CalendarID is simply a Ref to the Google Calendar table’s primary key field Row ID and over the latter, I have no control since the column properties of a Google Calendar come into AppSheet as read-only. The problem is a result of AppSheet’s internal algorithm. Let me demonstrate. You can very easily replicate the problem to troubleshoot. Simply create a table “Appointments” with two fields “AppointmentID” and “CalendarID”. Set the first as the primary key for this table and CalendarID as Ref to a table whose source is a Google Calendar. Then create a view for your Appointments table and through this add an Appointment record. While doing so for the CalendarID field choose “New” which lets you make a new entry to the Google Calendar table. After you save this record and wait for a say 10 seconds, on viewing this record you shall see that this Appointment record will have its reference broken. The CalendarID field will have a yellow exclamation against it. This is happening because AppSheet’s internal algorithm is creating a temporary value for the CalendarID which is being overwritten by Google Calendar a few seconds later breaking the reference. The solution seems to be for AppSheet to not generate a temporary value for CalendarID and let Google Calendar set it as it does so automatically. This way the reference will stay intact.

Arpit_Kumar

+Steve Coile My locale settings for my Google Calendar, Google spreadsheet, AppSheet, Browser and Mobile Device are all correct and in sync. Note that I am not experiencing any anomalies while dealing with time-related fields on any other table except the table with Google Calendar as a source. After making a new Google Calendar entry, the entry appears at the correct time on AppSheet for a few seconds after which it gets adjusted by GMT. Note that however, on Google Calendar it continues to display the correct time.

Steven_Coile

Sounds like a bug to me. Perhaps contact support@appsheet.com?