Need some serious design help. Sorry this is...

Need some serious design help.

Sorry this is gonna be long.

I maintain a registry for people needing shelter during an evacuation.

I am in the process of moving the registry from one system to smartsheet and have created an online form using Formstack that integrates beautifully.

What Iโ€™m trying to do with appsheet is create very user friendly apps for different areas:

Outbound Callers - calling registrants to see if they plan to evacuate, need transportation, and verify address info Transportation - list of everyone called that needs transport, with transport status update Shelter locations - ability to check in/out

Currently I have everything in one master sheet.

I started to get concerned when I saw the sheet limits - max 5000 rows.

While we currently only have 2000 registered I donโ€™t want to run into issues later.

So my thought was to create a different sheet based on shelter location.

This sheet would contain all the registrants demographic info.

I have many many columns dedicated to the callers, transp, shelter checkin, and then vlaues and counts based on checked in status.

I am wondering if itโ€™s better to have each of these on different sheets, with references back to the main registrant sheet.

Is this necessary for the appsheet design?

Am I looking a different apps for each area or can you assign permissions based on the view?

I would also like to incorporate barcoding for faster check in/out.

Is it possible to setup a behavior (or group of actions) that will auto date/time stamp check when barcode scanned and then another behavior to auto date/time stamp check out when barcode scanned again?

Any helpful tips would be greatly appreciated!

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@Tammi_Canelli Also, by following good database procedures, you would be able to hand the template to pretty much anyone, and they could spin up an application based on it. Remember, youโ€™re not doing those changes โ€œfor appsheetโ€ the things you would be doing to your data is for good data modeling in general.

It sounds like you know what youโ€™re talking about already! I would for sure have the registrants in their own table, and the actions they take in a separate tableโ€ฆ Transportation requests, shelter check-inโ€ฆ

The reason for this is if they have to get transferred to a new shelter, your want to retain how long they were at the first shelterโ€ฆ So Shelley location would have to be itโ€™s own record, not an editโ€ฆ

Also, if you pre register the people/families, then you can send them push notifications of the storm. Prior to them deciding that they need to get transported to a shelterโ€ฆ Soโ€ฆ Yeah, I would make it all separate tablesโ€ฆ

dang i didnโ€™t even think about the transfer during and retaining history.

i did travel down every other rabbit hole i think.

so my next question:

each table would have itโ€™s own ID:

RegID, TranID, etc?? and then Iโ€™m assuming I have those columns in each table as needed?

Can you have more than two referenced IDs in a table?

This level of detail is new to me.

Well if smartsheet went down we would revert to pen and paper - which was our experience during Irma (pre-Smartsheet) - it was horrible.

At least with everything in one sheet I am able to filter out columns with the reports and if we lose smartsheet Iโ€™d have all that data in one printoutโ€ฆso i think iโ€™m talking myself into keeping it on one sheet and maybe just using the slices to break up the data.

thoughts?

@Tammi_Canelli I think youโ€™d be better with appsheet since it stores a copy local for offline useโ€ฆ Especially in emergency situationsโ€ฆ how do you access smartsheet when the internet and power is out? With appsheet you can keep cooking. (I would go out on a limb and say that appsheet would in this case be more reliable than smartsheetโ€ฆ) And this here seems pretty cumbersomeโ€ฆ smartsheet.com - Smartsheet Smartsheet smartsheet.com

Is there documentation for the appsheet offline?

Iโ€™d like to read more about local use and is that one local file or local to all users that would sync when connection is restored?

@Tammi_Canelli help.appsheet.com - Offline & Sync: The Essentials

When appsheet downloads the definition onto the device, each user is working independently of the backend, then when they have connection it syncs their changesโ€ฆ So itโ€™s beautiful cause if you loose internet/signal everything keeps working just fineโ€ฆ (I work in remote construction sites and itโ€™s offline oftenโ€ฆ) Offline & Sync: The Essentials help.appsheet.com

Do you ever do any consulting?

@Tammi_Canelli I am an Appsheet Partner. Shoot me an email anytime grantstead@steadglobal.com

appsheet.com - Stead Global, LLC - portfolio of mobile apps created with AppSheet

I chose Appsheet to develop my own applications for my business, which is Project Portfolio Management. I have a lot of faith in the Appsheet platform. (Side note, my parents live in sugarloaf, keys area, and are still fixing their house up from Irmaโ€ฆ)

Stead Global, LLC - portfolio of mobile apps created with AppSheet appsheet.com

Tammi it is too bad you have to use Smartsheet.

It is so very limited in more ways than one.

Google Sheets can support a lot more than 5000 rows and of course there can be partitoning but Smartsheet also has limits on the column types it uses โ€“ doesnโ€™t have a decimal or float column type โ€“ has problems with date time columns.

I have had to work with Smartsheets in the past and introduced the client to relational database design in order to link the sheets together.

If you can, I would strongly recommend Google sheets. Google and Appsheet have a very good system up reputation and their back end servers are the best.

@Mary_Jane_Pender agreed, wish we could convert herโ€ฆ

I love google but getting stuff approved through Gov IT takes an act of God and they are all about smartsheet.

How would you compare the security between the two?

Google sheets on Google Drive is secured on Google servers by Google.

SmartSheet is secured on their servers.

Google is one of the largest digital cloud companies in the world and I would trust their security any day over a corporate or governmentโ€™s IT departmentโ€™s security firewall.

I am not aware of any breach of Google Drive or Google servers in the last 10 years.

Maybe Grant can comment on this as well.

@Tammi_Canelli yes, each table needs itโ€™s own keys. The cool part is that if you begin structuring in tables like to the power of appsheet while open up for you

Again Tammi I highly recommend you have a discussion with the CEO of AppSheet โ€“ Praveen.

He can certainly provide you with all the information you need to make a case for Google Drive.

Smartsheet is in the cloud โ€“ on its own servers too.

Mary how long does it usually take to get a response?

I only emailed yesterday but Iโ€™ve got mgmt asking questionsโ€ฆ

You sent it to sales@appsheet.com?

Tammi, please email me at pendermj@gmail.com so I can privately send you Praveenโ€™s email address.

So, in general I see that people use forms and appsheet, but then they want to continue using and playing with their backendโ€ฆ The first thing you should do is figure out what you need to do to never look at your backend againโ€ฆ Maybe itโ€™s forms for certain kinds of input, appsheet for internal stuff, dashboard reporting like cyfeโ€ฆ But at the end of the day, you need to stop messing with your backend directlyโ€ฆ So once you figure that out, then you stop caring what your backend looks likeโ€ฆ Then your free to build what you want!

Iโ€™ve been playing all afternoon but having serious issues.

I have: Registry Table Call Log Table Table Assignment Table

I can get bits and pieces to work but what I really need is a list of all calls that need to be made, grouped by table number.

in the registry table i have a regID that is linked to the call log table so that name, phone, etc auto populate and that works.

But on the call log view I only see the records that have been โ€œeditedโ€ to display the regID.

Iโ€™m so confusedโ€ฆ

Grant, is there a way to add you as a collaborator so you can see the app?

Since itโ€™s only a prototype Iโ€™m not sure how to get people to look at it.

@Tammi_Canelli in English, whatโ€™s the workflow of your application/business process?

Who puts information where, and then who picks it up and uses that information. Cause you should have a pretty solid business process, that the app is simply helping along

Grant I had a minor panic last night thinking about thisโ€ฆAs I work to separate my main smartsheet (129 columns) into multiple sheets I kept having this nagging thought - what if appsheet goes down when we need itโ€ฆSmartsheet doesnโ€™t have a way (at least that Iโ€™ve found) to link sheets - which would stop us dead.

How stable is appsheet?

Have you built a redundant process in your backend in the event appsheet does go down?

If so, can you share what you did?

@Tammi_Canelli What would you do if smartsheet went down? What would you do if Gmail went down? The internet is a crazy placeโ€ฆ I believe in a good people process, the app just helps basically onboard new people to a process, and helps data capture for reporting. So, once the process is good, then simply you switch to pencil and paper if the world explodesโ€ฆ

In my experience appsheet is pretty dang solid on the whole, and theyโ€™ve got pretty good backing.

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