Now Live: Updated Header & Tags in the Community

[jcadence]

Hello Creators!

In the coming days you’ll see a few changes in this community forum. Based on your feedback, we have two goals in mind that we believe will make you more successful as an app creator. First, we want to help make existing topics/ideas/questions more discoverable to all ability levels. Second, we want to encourage more ‘idea’ contributions from everyone in the community (we may know how the product works best to start, but you know how best to use it).

What we considered:

• Tags have been incomplete or inaccurate and need to better represent more of the product with the tags available.
• Many topics become redundant and/or hidden over time.
• Most traffic in the community is coming from ‘readers’ who just search/browse content.

We ran the numbers and here’s a chart that demonstrates a “Summarized Breakdown of Existing Topics”

With the data and community feedback in mind, we discovered a few areas that we could make improvements. Here’s a list of what we’re updating:

• Main update is a new menu bar focused on quick access to popular/important tags, to help everyone discover relevant topics & resources
• Expanded tags included under ‘Expressions’ umbrella, since it’s the most popular type of content
• Increased tag max per topic to 3
• Main categories, badges and ‘trust’ levels remain the same for now

Here’s a sneak peak of what the new navigation bar will look like:

Our ask of you is this. If you’ve posted topics or responded to threads that you feel would benefit from a change in tags, we encourage you to update the associated tags for accuracy. You have a better understanding of the intent behind your questions or post better than our team and we hope that this update helps you identify how to classify your questions and comments in the future.

Finally, this change is meant to help you, the app creator. Because this will impact how you find solutions and assistance within the community, we highly encourage you to leave your feedback by responding to either the poll below or by leaving comments in this thread.

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We look forward to continuing to build a strong community that helps you thrive. Thank you all for being a part of it!

[Kirk_Masden]

Thanks @JCadence! I’m looking forward to the improvements you’ve described.

As you are considering tagging in the community, I wonder if you would be willing to consider adding the tag “Editing interface” or something like that. Unless I’m mistaken, such a tag is not currently available but there have already been quite a few posts on the topic. Here’s just one example, but there are many others:

Old bug encountered AGAIN: Column type changed by editor / Editing interface issues Questions

This is an old issue that I really wish AppSheet would address: Recently, I’ve been bothered by a DateTime virtual column that keeps getting changed to a ChangeTimestamp column type: [32] There is no conceivable situation in which this would help a user because ChangeTimestamp columns have to be “real,” don’t they? I can understand the AppSheet interface automatically assigning a column type when one has not been assigned yet by the app developer but why must the interface keep changing…

[peterdykstra]

Thanks @Kirk_Masden, that’s a good one. Just added it as #editor, that could be paired with #ux if you want to specifically address interface topics.

[Kirk_Masden]

Thanks a lot!!

[Kirk_Masden]

By the way, I was not aware that I could add tags myself. Of course, it makes sense, but I think users will tend to choose from the tags that are listed, especially since the only indication is about selecting tags:

[peterdykstra]

Right now I think all tags are actually pre-determined, I don’t believe you’re able to make your own (but let me know if that’s not the case!). We wanted to do that for a while to establish consistent naming conventions as much as possible, since many parts of the platform can be called a variety of terms people may not recognize. @Kirk_Masden

[Kirk_Masden]

Understood. Thanks for the clarification. I’ll use #edit and, if I have time, I may go back to some previous posts and add that tag, if possible.

[peterdykstra]

That would be great - any of your posts you come across that you think would benefit from one of these added tags would be very helpful to update, especially the ones with solutions or in the #tips category. Thank you Kirk!

[peterdykstra]

Just want to resurface this thread as the new community header menu takes effect - curious to hear your thoughts & feedback. We’ll work on tweaking this as the menu is used and as the new & updated tags are used.

As a reminder, a couple primary goals of this update are:

• Easier discovery of existing important/popular topics
• Clean simple UX to help navigate quickly

[GreenFlux]

Thanks, @Peter! The new UI looks great on the desktop. Will mobile users get a similarly redesigned menu?

Also, I noticed a few tags only have one post, like the DEEPLINK page. It might be helpful to have a pinned post at the top of each section that links to the related support documents.

Some users may come straight to the community for answers before checking the support docs. A pinned link to the docs could help answer a lot of questions and avoid unnecessary posts clogging the forums.

[Kirk_Masden]

Here’s one little problem:

[Kirk_Masden]

Also, it seems that the “Community leaderboard” is gone. That was an incentive to me to participate more actively.

[Kirk_Masden]

Wow! The “leaderboard” is back already. Thanks!!

[Kirk_Masden]

Also, “Report a bug” and “Request a feature” don’t seem to fit very well under the heading of “My account”. Perhaps another column called “Issues” might be better.

A column called “Community” might be good too. In addition to the “Community Leaderboard” I mentioned, there was a feature that allowed a user to see who hadn’t been replied to yet. Explanations about community policies, etc. could be put in such a column too.

[Fouad_H_Saad1]

Great changes. I think It’s very useful community, I got a lot of benefit from follow this community. Thank and appreciate your efforts.

[Skip2MiLu]

I think this is a good step in the right direction.

It seems that expressions are still the biggest use for the community and it would be great if it would be easier to find posts and examples on specific expressions and or other tags.

It would be great if some form of simple AI would be used in automatic tagging.
Example:
Any text in a post that begin with Select ( or Select( would automatically tag Select() expression under the list section of expressions drop down.

The AI does not need to be complex and tagging does need to be static. For example the AI just creates the initial tag whereby users who read the post can (or be requested on read) adjust the tags freely or changes can be moderated and confirmed (if you really want to do that, which I think is not necessary).

AI tagging can also be a separate tagging sections from manual tagging for now if you do not want to mess / overwrite user tags. This will help role out even if not completely working and just creates another layer to search from.

I am starting to release that some form of initial “AI” tagging will be necessary in future considering the following:

1. I have noticed that a lot of posts are not tagging correctly or users (including myself) are not always sure what to tag.
2. I do not see many people going back to tag posts that where either not tagged or not tagged correctly.
3. I see a lot of repeated posts related to the same topics covered in earlier posts, which I would assume is caused by users not finding related topics easier enough.
4. Improving post search capabilities will really help efficiency of community use.

Improve Search
a. Improving the current search with or without the need of tags would be the the simplest way to start before any of the above is considered.

b. I think just having a simple And filters on tags or text that dynamically gives and overview of post as you go a long would really help for now.

Tag Search Example:
-Select the Select() expression tag would dynamically show posts with the select expression.
-A 2nd selection for example Orderby() expression will show fewer post dynamically or forms selection would show Select() expressions related in use in form views.

Text Search on the above would at least be helpful for now even if less precise.

All the above is something to think about…

In short the community has been really helpful for developers and where ever we can improve in getting the most out of it would be great.

[Steve]

Not visible to those of us using the dark mode theme.

[Koichi_Tsuji]

Hi @JCadence @Peter

Happy new year to you both and community here. I know the history of Appsheet for the last couple of years, it is growing all the time. It is no doubt we see the same story for upcoming this years and i hope to see more of new happy App creators and users to join.

The new navigation bars based on the category is great, thanks for all the works and your usual approach for betterment regardless of what topic and issues we are on.

One think I wish to have improvement in the community page is the list of bugs / issues so that the visitor to the page can get the quick and easy insight what is happening to the app in general.

The community site is the place for app user and creator to report the bug, altough sometime it is not bugs, just due to misunderstanding or so, but some of them are actually the bugs.
I hope we will see lessser number of the bugs this year. To be honest with you, we saw bit too much high number of the stoppage of the service and bugs during the last year. Actually, I did received the claim from my end user and clients so.
It could be tradeoff relatinship, between quick, fast development of new features to the app, and number of the unexpected bugs… It is tricky to handle, but as the appsheet platform user, I just gently request Appsheet team to reduce the number of the bugs and errors as little as possible for this year.

Anyway, let me stop, as I started to deviated from what I wanted to say here.

When the issue (s) are confirmed, it is a bug for sure by the appsheet team, we wish to see the quick list of such issue and bugs somewhere in Community board. The list is constructed with the quick description to the case and if or not the case is open or closed, and expected time the bug is solved. Currently, number of the people reports the bugs through the different thread. This makes the community board little messy.

If we are able to confirm with a grance, if the issue i m seeing is actually recognized or reported by other community member, and most importantly the Appsheet team is workion on or not, we feel assured.

I m Appsheet partner and selling Appheet service to the clients, so I do carry the responsibility to be transparent to my clients what the issue is, why the service is interruppted, and when it will be recovered etc. I useally check those status by direct dialogue on support@appsheet.com, but sometime, i keep eyes on commuinty thread.

Handling the bugs, issue on the community could be better I believe.

Hope this is going to be taken.