Issues with Google Calendar

[Jose_Vilches]

Hey everyone,

I have an issue with integrating my Google Calendar. When I had first attempted this, it would delete my data source from Sheets, thus breaking my app every time. In order to fix it, I would have to remove AppSheet’s access to Drive and Calendar, and reconnect.

I have AppSheet Pro and I asked support which they tried to walk me through. At the end of it all, they sent the issue to Google OAuth.

I have been ignored by the folks that work at AppSheet ever since they couldn’t fix my issue and tried sweeping it under the rug.

Since the AppSheet mods cannot and will not help, maybe the community can.

Thanks in advance.

[Steve]

What specifically did you do that produced the problem?

I took a look at the ticket. The problem you’re having is well outside my experience, so I don’t think I have anything to offer. Still, I’ll try to escalate the issue internally to try to get some movement.

[Jose_Vilches]

Thanks Steve,

my only issue is simply adding the Google Calendar source as an additional data source. Since I have the Pro Plan, AppSheet says I can use multiple data sources.

It seems no one could help us on the team, but even worse is that we haven’t received word on what the Google OAuth team has told them.

So now I’m stuck paying a membership for an app that won’t work for my company. Yikes

[pravse]

Hi @Jose_Vilches, from everything I can gather, your situation seems to be a special case. I’m on a long email thread going back and forth between our team and the Google OAuth team. It isn’t being ignored, but I totally agree it isn’t being treated with the urgency it deserves. I apologize on behalf of our team. We will figure out how to credit your account so you aren’t paying while you are stuck waiting on us.

To explain the technical details. Every time you sign in, or add a data source to AppSheet, we go through an authentication process called OAuth. Basically, our system gets a token from the data source that lets the system act on your behalf (to read and write data to the data source).

Now, when you have multiple data sources that all come from the same provider (in this case, you already had Google Drive and then add Google Calendar), we are supposed to get back a token that has permission to access Drive AND permission to access your calendar. But for some strange reason, we only get back permission to access your calendar. And this therefore breaks your apps.

I have never seen this problem reported before, across hundreds of thousands of customers. So it is some wierd edge case unfortunately affecting your account.

[Jose_Vilches]

Hey @praveen, thank you for replying and explaining the situation with full detail and precision. The other AppSheet employees did not do this for me and I appreciate you stepping up. I can also agree the issue wasn’t ignored completely, but my case has been closed twice without resolution. Even some of the people who helped me stopped replying to me after a while, and I truly did feel ignored.

Moving forward, I understand now I am somehow a unique case. I’m either lucky or unlucky. Either way, it does affect business operations as I operate under an LLC and want to service my clients with AppSheet.

However if support is this way with us, who knows how they will be with my future clients which is a huge concern to me as well. If we pay for 24/7 support, that is what we expect.

Thank you for reaching and for helping resolve this issue.

[pravse]

Yes, we generally pride ourselves on support and responsiveness. However, of late, we are going through a significant transition with three changes: (a) a new support system with different controls, (b) an extra layer of support personnel who support AppSheet as well as other Google products on the frontline — this improves the initial responsiveness but adds some inefficiencies for deeper issues, © many new members of the engineering team who are all ramping up on our product and processes.

So in the short-term, despite everyone’s best intentions, this has been disruptive and some things have fallen between the cracks. But we are doing this because we hope that as it stabilizes, we can support at the greater scale and expectations that customers have of Google. In the interim, if there is any issue that you or anyone else is stuck on, please do not hesitate to contact me directly (praveen@appsheet.com still works as my email address). It is not a scalable mechanism for sure, but your business is critical to you and therefore to us. If we are blocking it, I’ll try my best to steer the issue to someone who can resolve it quickly.

@Scott_Haaland @vinothp @Arvind_Chaudhary FYI

[Jose_Vilches]

I understand where you are coming from. I wasn’t aware and it is all the other staff members had to say to garner more understanding.

I appreciate your understanding and responsiveness. My faith in AppSheet has been restored and I will resume to have faith that you all can help fix my issue. Thank you very much for your time and effort!

[shaaland]

@Jose_Vilches - I just wanted to give you an update. Engineering is continuing to investigate this, and we are working with the Google Workspace team to try to get to the root cause. Thank you for your patience!

[shaaland]

In case others run into this issue, I just wanted to post an update here to hopefully give some guidance on how to fix this in case it comes up in the future:

Root Cause : Adding scopes from Google Workspace incrementally causes some earlier scopes to drop when it has been installed as a domain wide app from GSuite Marketplace.

Resolution:

• If the app is installed via GSuite Marketplace - uninstall it
• Delete the Google Calendar Data Source configuration
• Go to Google permissions and remove AppSheet permissions for your email address (Assuming you are the App Creator) : https://myaccount.google.com/permissions
• Log out of AppSheet and Log back in - reauthenticate/reauthorize via the Google OAuth prompts
• Add the Google Calendar Data Source and grant authorizations

Thanks,
Scott