Is there a way of using Bulk Selections to generate Workflow reports?

[Griff]

I need to set up a mechanism whereby my user can select entries from a list (Bulk Select) and have the App generate a report based on the selection. The only way I can think of is create an action to write the Keys of the selected entries into a “spare” spreadsheet, then us that to filter the records for a report. Otherwise I think it would need to create one report for each selected item. Am I right or have I missed something?

[Steve]

Griff:

Am I right or have I missed something?

You are right.

[Griff]

Thanks for the confirmation, however I suspect what I am hoping to achieve may still not be possible.

I need to do the following actions so I have created individual actions to perform each:

1. If the Invoice number in my “Bookmarks” spreadsheet is Blank, launch a Detail View to accept input of the number and save it in my “Bookmarks” table
2. Add a new line in my Bookmarks table with the Key field value for each Day Sheet Number that was Bulk Selected.
3. Create PDF based on the Day Sheets selected, whose Id’s are stored in the Bookmarks table (not yet developed)
4. Delete the Bookmarked Day Sheet details from the Bookmarks file
5. Set my Invoice number back to Blank in the Bookmarks table (not yet developed)

Each Action I’ve developed displays prominently when I enter Bulk Selection and works at the press of the respective icon.
However the Action I created to run the sequence of actions doesn’t display on my table View.
Is there a way to have this Run All Steps Action appear as an option when I activate Bulk Select?
Otherwise, how can I make it work without having the user press each of the 5 buttons in sequence?

Thinking further, I could add the records to the Bookmark sheet first then allow that to trigger a workflow to do the rest but I am unsure how AppSheet handles the interaction. Will it finish the Bulk Action (i.e. add multiple records) then trigger the Workflow, or will each addition trigger a separate run of the Workflow?

[Steve · Accepted solution]

Multi-select cannot perform navigation actions, so (1) can’t be done from multi-select.

(2) can be done from multi-select.

(3) cannot be done from multi-select. There is no programmatic way to know that the action is being run as part of a multi-select, nor is there a way to perform an action only once for a multi-select (e.g., only once after all of the multi-select have been done).

To accomplish what you want, I’d suggest not using multi-select, and instead implement your own search feature that allows the user to choose the desired rows, capture them in a slice, then act on the slice.

[Rafael_ANEIC-PY]

Griff:

Am I right or have I missed something?

[Griff]

Thanks for reinfocing Rafael

[Griff]

Thanks Steve. That’s what I’m in the process of doing but that has introduced a new set of problems that I have raised in another question. Because Actions are performed on the client side, and Workflows on the server side, I am fearful that my data integrity will be compromised. Hopefully there is a way.