Merging cells / UX advice

[Egor_P]

Dear Appsheet community,

Within my app, I have built a dashboard, which provides an overview of the relevant logistical information. The main part of the dashboard is cargo-related information, which is grouped based on event to which that cargo has to be delivered (and is sorted based on the number of days left).

The most left columns (which are blurred due to confidentiality) are cargo-specific information, as every row in the group represents a unique set of information. However, none of the cargo rarely requires individual transportation, meaning that most of them are delivered using the same trailer.

What that means is that I have to “duplicate” trailer information for each of the rows, even if that information is already visible within that group. For example, in the top-most group, I have the same packing start, departure and arrival times listed 4 times, which makes the use of dashboard inefficient, overloaded and difficult to read.

In either Excel or gSheets, the obvious solution would be to merge cells. However, I suspect that this function is not yet present within the Appsheet. Another solution would be to create a separate view for trailer information, but that would break the logical link between the cargo and transportation times, which is also undesirable in my case.

So my question is: is there another, neater solution for displaying this kind of repetitive data? I have attached an example of my dashboard below.

Thanks in advance!

[Aleksi]

Add a virtual column where you can merge those columns together and then group with that column. The formula could be like [Trailer]&" - “&[Packing Start]&” “&[Departure]&” "&[Arrival]

[Egor_P]

@Aleksi, that’s what I was thinking of, but it would only be suitable if I could do sub-grouping within the main view. Otherwise, to get to the trailer info, I would need to click first on the event group, and only then to find relevant trailers.

Another thing which is possible is grouping Trailer together with Event, but that breaks an overview of cargo-to-event preparation, which is also undesirable for me.

[Aleksi]

So… you would like to have Event as a main group and then the subgroup but you would still need to show records as well?

[Egor_P]

My apologies if the explanation isn’t clear enough. The ideal solution for me would be something similar to what you can see in the picture, where there is the main group, and also two sub-groups.

But then this would turn into a feature request, as this is also not yet available in appsheet

Do you think there might be another solution to maintain this kind of overview?

[Aleksi]

You are correct, this is not possible at this moment. I will change this as a feature request because there are no direct workaround for doing this in the same view. Have you thought to add an additional Event view where you could select it? Then you could group this view with the trailer etc.

[OracleNick]

The ability for merged cells to be read in appsheet will be an absolute gamechanger for organization, really wish this was the case