Sample Apps for Automation!

[Brand-It]

Hi all… I would really like to play around with some ‘sample apps’ for ‘Automation’. I’ve been patiently waiting for some of the senior members (or staff) on here to make something public on Automation.

For me, using sample apps are a great way to help understand everything thats going on under the hood!

Sample apps are also a great way to show off ‘special features’, ‘best practices’ & ‘use cases’

[Marc_Dillon]

Great suggestion!

[Steve]

I haven’t found any value in Automation, just complexity. None of its complexity meets any needs I have. Workflows and reports worked just fine for me.

[MultiTech]

@Brand-It what did you have in mind?

[Brand-It]

Well I would like to see it in action in a real life use case… In my case I have an ‘Orders’ app where a customer is chosen, a ‘Specification Form’ is completed and a ‘Quotation’ is automaticially created.

If this Quote is ‘Accepted’ then this action automaticially creates a ‘Work Order’ which has ‘Tasks’ automaticially assigned to each Department (4 departments).
As the Production teams complete their assigned Tasks, management sees a ‘live’ picture of the overall Job Progress.
Some of these Tasks are not assigned until a predecessor has been marked ‘Completed’.
When all the Production Tasks are marked ‘Completed’, an email is sent to the ‘Administrator’ asking for a Delivery docked to be printed & given to ‘Dispatch’.
An email is also sent to Dispatch/Delivery Team informing them of the pending delivery
The Delivery Team then arranges & deliver’s the product to the Address taken from the ‘Specification Form’

So all the information needed to do this comes from the original ‘Specification Form’ (& not a ‘Bot’ in sight!).

Basicially I designed this app thinking that I was doing all this ‘Automation’… then the actual ‘Automation’ came & takes over. So, I’m thinking my app is now inefficient /old technology & I need to integrate or make good use of the new Automation features. The thing is I don’t know where to start… I was hoping to dig through some sample automation apps to see what’s possible & what I could/should implement.

[MultiTech]

Brand-It:

So, I’m thinking my app is now inefficient /old technology & I need to integrate or make good use of the new Automation features

Not necessarily the way to be thinking about automation.

• Remember: automation is an evolution of workflows & scheduled reports.
  • NOT a replacement for actions

For everything you’ve described, except the email part at the end, everything would be accomplished through actions; it’s only the email part that would need a bot.

[Brand-It]

Okay, well thats why I’d really like to see some sample apps that demonstrate the capabilities of Automation. I cannot come up with an idea for Automation if I haven’t even seen it in action myself!

When someone shares a sample app on Automation… I’ll copy it, study it, think on how I could implement it somewhere into our workflows. Then I copy it & create a new app using my own data. Usually by the time I have all this done I have a good understanding on how everything works together.

I know it’s early days yet but… surely some people must know about the potential advantages in using/ implementing Automation… so lets hear it?

Also the way I see it is that it’s not up to the senior members on here to create sample apps for us… it is the appsheet developers that should take the time and share some sample apps on Automation! Or if they don’t want to do it then, they should work closer with the senior members on here & give them more help & support because the rest of us depend a lot on their help!

[Steve]

Attn @prithpal @Dan_Bahir @praveen

[Dan_Bahir]

Thanks for bringing this up.

We plan to upgrade the sample apps from using workflows to Bots.