Upcoming product changes

UPDATE: There have been a handful of posts with different dates. The official date of change is May 10th. We have posted additional details in this thread

Hi everyone!

With the upcoming general availability launch of AppSheet Automation we wanted to provide additional information on what will be taking place within the editor and product. Before we do, we want to say a big THANK YOU to each and everyone of you that has participated in our preview and testing phases. The feedback youโ€™ve provided will continue to help improve the product and its functionality over time. We wonโ€™t have everything addressed at the time of GA, but we will continue to work to improve.

Hereโ€™s a few key changes youโ€™ll start to notice over the coming weeks:

The bots associated with AppSheet Automation are the new way of configuring workflow rules/reports with events and processes. Moving forward, use bots for new workflows/automations. You will still be able to modify existing workflow rules / reports for several weeks. We will post a modification announcement once this ability changes. During this time, in phases, your workflows rules/reports will be automatically migrated to bots. There is no additional work required from your end on the migration.

Our goal is to provide richer capabilities through a super-set of workflow rules and reports to help save each of you time in your application and automation development process. Please continue to provide feedback in posts on the community, this thread, or in a direct message to myself or the team.

Thank you again for being part of our journey. We couldnโ€™t do this without you.

Kindly,
The AppSheet team

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Will the existing method for creating workflows go away?

Hi @Daisy_Ramirez the short answer is that they are changing, see below

The bots associated with AppSheet Automation are the new way of configuring workflow rules/reports with events and processes. Moving forward, use bots for new workflows/automations.

Ok so we canโ€™t simply create a quick workflow without using the Automation tool? Iโ€™ve not been able to review the Automation tool due to deadlines and need to know if I have to jump into the tool now in order to support clients

The recommendation is to start building bots rather than the legacy workflows to address automation needs. We have a ton of how-to videos and content coming out shortly, including an Office Hours tomorrow morning. These should be able to help get you started, and please ask questions if you need additional assistance.

@prithpal can also help any additional questions.

mi pregunta es

Los flujos de trabajo que tengo actualmente en un monton de aplicaciones y que mis clientes usan, simplemente appsheet dice que van a desaparecer, es correcto eso??

I wished that current settings will be retained as legacy mode in addition to new automation โ€ฆ as it is quite simple, not simply because we are used to and familiar with it. Setting for automation will requires more of jobs to set up the same things.

The best options (at least to me) was to set up the simple workflow (along wiht action) with current action/workflow set ups.
If it does not support our business requiremnet, like the case where we need to invoke worflow by another workflow, then we go to automation.

But I never mind.

Austin
Participant V

Feel โ€œSLIGHTLYโ€ back stabbed by this statement since its only gonna be maybe 2 months since posting when workflows are being turned off. I am literally in the middle of making new apps and now I have to completely stop my work and learn this new automation set up that is currently just incredibly more annoying to deal with creating than the incredibly simple workflow. Youโ€™re removing an absolutely integral part of making an app on 24-28 hr notice to be replaced by something that many of us have been under the impression this is a beta that you shouldnโ€™t even use in production yet?

Austin
Participant V

Correction:I refreshed and my ability to make workflows is gone so 45 days after being told donโ€™t use them on basically 0 minutes notice cause I found this post notifying me while working an app.

I feel quite backstabbed too actually, just look at this

My app development capabilities are pretty much back to newbie right now, i have not looked into automation either as i was under the impression we would be notified before the plug was pulled on workflows.

Weโ€™ll take your feedback and talk about it in the team today โ€” perhaps it is too abrupt a change.

But also, could you please try to create a bot in the automation tab instead of a workflow rule. It should be the same amount of work with the same level of effort and with the same concepts if youโ€™re just building a straight linear rule. You should not feel like a newbie โ€” it isnโ€™t a whole new thing. Almost 100% of the work in creating a workflow rule is in configuring the tasks and the tasks are identical in an automation bot. This is intentionally why we felt this would not be letting anyone down or affecting their productivity.

El problema es que si eliminan los flujos de trabajo, todas las aplicaciones que ya tenemos ยฟque va a pasar con ellas? ยฟque pasa con aplicacion que tiene flujos de trabajo y la copio?

I had my team (myself included) try to make a simple bot a few weeks ago. We all had trouble. The conceptual change felt really jarring and many of us could not get the bots to behave the way we wanted.

One of our new hires (totally new to appsheet) learned it faster than the rest of the more experienced team members. I think that speaks to the difficulty of applying previous knowledge to this new approach.

We assumed the tool was still โ€œbuggyโ€ and so none of us have taken the time to fiddle with it and iron out our broken bots. My team is feeling the whiplash right now. We were also planning our own training content on the feature, but did not feel the feature was mature enough to start building production level bots yet.

@Stefan_Quartemont , thatโ€™s fair. Weโ€™ve done a lot of UI change in the last few weeks to make it easier to comprehend.
But also, we heard the feedback. Please stay tuned โ€” Jen is posting something on this in the next few minutes.

Thanks @praveen .

Just to be clear, I think Automation is a good reworking of the โ€œworkflowโ€ feature and opens a ton of cool doors. Excited that itโ€™s going mainstream and that the AppSheet team is putting alot of confidence behind that part of the product.

I was operating on the impression that it was still Area 51 but will take a more committed approach to adoption of the feature.

@Stefan_Quartemont I agree, I noticed that trying to use my previous knowledge did hinder me a bit.

Itโ€™s reassuring to hear top level pros admitting that it was a bit difficult because I was quite self critical about having a tough time LOL.

Also want to thank @praveen for being so open minded and humble to reconsider the rollout and thanks to the Appsheet team for all the work to evolve the platform.

I trying to create a simple scheduled report but Iโ€™m not having any luck.

@Mauricio_Bick โ€” could you describe the problem you are running into please. You should be able to define a bot with a scheduled event and then the appropriate task (email or whatever). @prithpal FYI

What am I doing wrong?

Same for me, I try and try. still cannot get it to work.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE keep the old workflow.

Thanks for taking the feedback. I feel fine learning the new process just the suddenness of the change from โ€œbetaโ€ to โ€œyou can only use thisโ€ in a single day. I have things to do by the end of this week that I need to be confident that they will work. I canโ€™t hide that the recent changes and problems caused by the email channels makes me slightly more hesitant to try new features until required to.

Side note on the thing that has actually been the most frustrating thing with bots so far has been these dang suggestions for everything. I have trained myself from writing formulas to click the โ€œsaveโ€ button and if I am typing something very short I can type the name faster than the suggestions load. Then I go to click the โ€œsaveโ€ and it moves. I donโ€™t think I have ever used the suggestions in other locations and I doubt I will ever use a suggestion here. Just cause if it autofills wrong I am gonna spend as much time changing as I would setting up a new one. And most of the time if I read the suggested view or action theyโ€™re not things I need at all making more complex and specific actions and views. Would love the ability to remove all suggestions cause theyโ€™re more likely to create something I donโ€™t want accidentally because theyโ€™re 1 click.
3X_6_5_65ee7fa0ced800da88b1e979aab2b734e8211cea.png

YES! YES! YES!

To satisfy those who have different levels of skill and knowledges to the AppSheet, it could be useful that we have account settings to turn on/off the โ€œsuggestionโ€ globally under the account when we work and edit app.

Former Community Member
Not applicable

Thanks for the feedback folks, will definitely explore options / user preferences for suggestions.

It (suggestion) will be found useful for those who just get onboard appsheet and start to learn, but once the knowledges reaches out to the certain level, suggestion become noise, honestly speaking. Dont take me wrong, suggestion should be powerful and helpful, but depending on to whome.

Hi @Austin_Lambeth we will learn and adjust to get the right balance for the suggestions โ€” new users vs experienced. Your feedback on this is useful. The goal is to get close to something like Google search auto-complete where it doesnโ€™t get in your way but it is useful even for people who search a lot.

Thanks for the presentation today and hard work!

Honestly, I think putting the โ€œsaveโ€ at the top so it doesnโ€™t move would help cause right now they are in the way only for the automation tab. All the other suggestions are in places that you can generally avoid and I feel like this solution would be least cumbersome to implement.
(please ignore terrible photoshopping)
3X_3_e_3e1e9b97be4c232d9525e3635187235b38b885ca.png

The conditioning to not hit enter plus moving the save is what causes this for me personally. In most programs, you hit enter when youโ€™re done and you hit shift+enter if you need new lines but appsheet doesnโ€™t have a way of saving a formula via only keys. I should probably make a whole feature request for a shortcut for saving formulas

Thanks for the feedback, Austin. Please let us know how these suggestions could be more relevant for you.

I think if you could cut up the suggestions that might help. So make it suggest an event only, then after Iโ€™ve picked my event suggest processes that I have or a kind of process that would be expected.

In my screenshot above it suggests when REQUISITION record is updated, send a notification. If it for example said โ€œwhen REQUISITION record is updatedโ€ then I select that and it lists out the โ€œsend an emailโ€, โ€œsend a notificationโ€, etc. that would be more useful cause it gives me alot more options and give more chances for a hit or a correct suggestion.

Also making the suggestions a bit more intelligent. My REQUISITION table is read only for example so suggesting events on the REQUISITION table canโ€™t be useful, looking for phone numbers and email fields in the tables to suggest sending SMS or emails.

I spend the majority of my workflows/to be bots to execute the update data in another table style actions so adding that action type, which I know is somewhere on the dev list, once that feature is implemented I will be more focused when using bots to do email, notification, and sms type things which will lead to the suggestions being more accurate by proxy.

(tried to format this to be more readable but that backfired)

Great feedback, Austin. Thank you. Weโ€™ll address what you said about table permissions.

Can you give a couple examples of the types of actions youโ€™d like to run?

Our goal is to make the suggestions useful for both new app creators and experienced ones, so your feedback is incredibly valuable.

Thank you everyone for your feedback, weโ€™re rolling out a change in product that will allow everyone to continue to engage with workflows in a legacy fashion until 4/28 at the earliest. Youโ€™ll see this update tomorrow morning in the next rollout.

Is my understanding correct that current workflow rules will not be automatically converted into new bots? With the speed of this change and the elimination of legacy workflows, I would have at least consider auto converting like for like before shutting off legacy capabilities at such a high speed.

@Mike I know that the legacy workflows will be migrated onto the same system bots run on, @prithpal can provide a better answer for how legacy workflows will appear in the product. There shouldnโ€™t be any effort on your part to migrate workflows to the new system.

That will be a big help. Very good to know.

Does that mean my legacy workflows will continue to work? What does that mean โ€œthey are being migrated onto the same system bots run on?โ€
I seem to be reading conflicting statements in this thread.

Penny

Your legacy workflows will continue to work, they will be migrated on the backend. No addition work is required from you for this to proceed.

Net new workflows will need to be built with bots starting next week. Weโ€™ve provided a few additional resources to help learn the new process above.

Thank you

Has this happened yet? I canโ€™t cerate workflows the good old-fashioned way. I need to create a workflow ASAP.

Thank you.