A Step-Thru Form With Multiple One-to-Many Children Relationships?

AppSheet AppSheet Q&A
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Hey there!

I received a request to build a Job Safety Analysis app for a technician to use to visit a site, record the basic steps of a task (like replacing a wire), record the hazards associated with each step (like electrocution), and then record the solutions for each hazard (like leather gloves). A step can have many hazards, a hazard can have many solutions. AppSheet can of course handle all this with related REFs and such, but I have a new wrinkle:

The request is now that the form in the app “step them through” instead of relying on them to save the form, then add a child and save it, then go to the child and add the grandchild, etc etc. I think the problem is that it’s not intuitive to have to keep saving and going back up a level to add siblings. But because this is a hierarchy of several one-to-many relationships on top of each other, I know of no other way to accommodate the original requirements.

Have any of you seen/built anything that can put a user “on rails” and elegantly walk them through creating a dynamic number of children and grandchildren? My requestor wanted it to be like, they save the initial parent form, then it says “Would you like to add a Step?” you hit yes, describe the step, it asks “Would you like to add a hazard?”, you hit yes, “Would you like to add a solution?”, yes, “Would you like to add another solution” no, then back to “would you like to add another hazard for Step 1?” etc etc.

I hope that makes sense and honestly, I’m 90% sure AppSheet just isn’t built to work this way, but I thought I would take a shot in the dark here and see if any of you AppSheet veterans have solved something like this already?

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PhilTheThrill:

I hope that makes sense and honestly

100%

PhilTheThrill:

I’m 90% sure AppSheet just isn’t built to work this way

-100%

You can absolutely do what your client is wanting, it’s just… involved.

  • You have to create a system of two parts:
    1. A system that allows users to ‘encode’ the things they need to do into the app
    2. A system that then looks at what the user has entered, and takes the user through that process

Here’s a demo from a client’s app

Here’s how it’s put together


3X_8_9_89532d116fa77e6cf42b2559d54db2fa2021d2fd.jpeg

  • Obviously you’ll need to do something different with your save event actions… but this is the idea at least
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Incredible. And here I thought I knew AppSheet really well… that’s some next level stuff you’re bringing! Thank you so much for taking the time to do this, it’s extremely helpful

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