Best way to show ‘Loading…’ until AppSheet report file is ready

AppSheet AppSheet Q&A
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1

Hi everyone :waving_hand:

I have an automation in my AppSheet app that generates a report file (PDF).
When the user presses a button to generate the report, the file takes around 15–20 seconds to be created.

The problem is that the file link appears immediately, but if the user clicks it too early, the file doesn’t exist yet — it opens as blank or gives an error.
After some seconds, the file becomes available, but by then the user is already confused.

Any suggestions?

2

I do it this way:

Add a field: ready_file
When the user presses a button (action), set that field to: “No”
When the bot finishes set that field to: “Yes”
Show the file-link only if ready_file = “Yes”

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3

It’s been awhile. My recollection is that the File-type column isn’t given a value at all until the file generation is complete. If true, set the Only if this condition is true expression for the Open File action to something like ISNOTBLANK([file-column]), replacing file-column with the name of the File-type column.

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