Little Brain Dead Atm

Jonathan_S · 03-28-2020 05:00 PM

Hello Everyone,

I have a maintenance App and I am having some Request from the employees that I don’t know how to deal with. I know Its possible so I told them no problem and now here I am

In my maintenance App I have a machines Table and a Parts Table.
I have another Table that Connects these Machines and Parts Together.

My Table for connecting machines and Parts. This way when a user selects a machine all the parts associated with said machine are displayed.

Currently coupling Parts is very Tedious. Sometimes there are components that are utilized on a handful of machines. And an entry must be made for each of these machines.

What everyone is looking for is the ability to select a handful of machines along with a part, or a handful of parts along with a machine, or a handful of each if every-machine needs to be coupled with every part.

Also there are part categories, not sure how this would be implemented because they would need to be able to select multiple parts from multiple categories. Currently it is just a large list with all the parts from all the categories listed from which they can choose.

Im not sure how one would go about this. The app to me is already overly compensated. Feel Free to take a look here. Maintenance-1164890

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Marc_Dillon

I think I would start by creating a new table with 3 columns; key,machines,parts. The machines and parts columns would be EnumList type, base type ref to associated tables.
This is the form for users to fill out to create multiple links.

From here I would setup an on-save grouped action that triggers a whole bunch of different “Data: Add new row to another table” actions. This would be the hard part since you’ll have to set an action for every combination possible, using index(…,1), index(…,2), etc. Just thinking about this makes me cringe.
Alternatively, it might be easier to do so via start expressions in a webhook to Appsheet API.
Also alternatively is to have a Google App Script handle it. If you’re familiar with GAS, this is probably the easiest way, but the records won’t be created instantly upon sync like the users might expect. Actually I just realized that I’ve accomplished this exact feature with a GAS.

Jonathan_S

I was thinking move along the lines of having separate tables that are part of the form. And than some expression to add rows the my Machine parts table.
Im just not sure how this would be implemented.

You see how this would work?
Im not seeing any reasons why it wouldn’t but than again Im not even to sure how one would go about this.

Marc_Dillon

I don’t understand what you’re suggesting here. Like child records?

Jonathan_S

Yes exactly, and than from those 2 tables, reiterate over them and create records in the machines parts tables. Just not sure what kind of expression would be used for this. If only we could use for loops etc.

Marc_Dillon

Still not sure if I’m understanding your suggestion, but it seems like it would still come with a large burden of user input, having to create all these child records.

Thus my suggestion of GAS or start expressions.

Jonathan_S

Hmm, Ive never heard of Gas or anything like this.

Could you point me into the correct direction? are there gas experts here?

Marc_Dillon

GAS = Google Apps Script

Jonathan_S

I would really like it if anyone would have any ideas on how to make this happen within appsheet. That would be Ideal.

Jonathan_S

Anybody, anyway to accomplish this purely within appsheet?

Marc_Dillon

My first two suggestions are both entirely contained in Appsheet. Of the two I think I’d go with the API one. A 2-level nested start expression is all you need.