If I have a header and footer (page number) on the first page in Google Document, these will not be copied on the next pages in the PDF version sent by AppSheet Bots. Most of the formatting done in Google Document will not look the same / neat in the PDF version. When can we expect to see this problem resolved?
I am unaware of any plans to address this.
This is a design factor within the PDF generator tool AppSheet uses with its automation services. It is my understanding that it is a Third-Party tool.
There are complexities with our AppSheet apps automation that make pre-determining pagination a difficult task for the tool. The point being that its not an easy task to implement.
The best we, App Creators, can do for the moment is submit a Feature Idea and try to garner enough interest from the rest in the community to to get AppSheet’s attention and influence prioritizing this Feature Idea over all the others.
Actually it’s the other way around. They moved to an inhouse solution which involves Skia, the same that Chromium uses to generate a PDF from a website Ctrl/Cmd+P
Understood. By Third-party I mean the use of a service NOT under AppSheets control - i.e. AppSheet cannot simply make changes to the service whenever it desires. It’s an external service to AppSheet that requires jumping through hoops to get changes made. Granted…those hoops may be fewer and set lower for AppSheet than for us.
We just need to convince AppSheet to go through the hoops in the first place!
Thank you all for your comments.
In this case, AppSheet is not much of use to me.
It is useful to collect the data, but not useful for the finished product that needs to be shown to the client (the report - to transform lots of data into coherent information / summaries that have the correct format for reading / interpretation). This should be one of the goals for the automation (to me is the number one in the list). The quality of the reports (headers, footers, branding, colors, page numbers, alignment, photos, icons, summary tables, graphs / charts, etc.) is essential.
What option do we have to talk with AppSheet software creators to ask them to put on their roadmap, as priority, the resolve of this problem?
I mean both are under Google’s umbrella, that’s why I didn’t considered it to be third-party, they moved from PDF Rocket to Google’s Skia
An Update on Missing Images in PDF Reports - Google Cloud Community
To a few businesses, yes I agree it is essential. But it’s not as commonly needed as it once was. Why? Because businesses now can get the same information from the app directly - anywhere, at any time from any device. More and more companies are moving to a greener, digital only presence so formatting things into a PDF, meant for paper, is becoming less needed.
It will be hard to convince AppSheet that they need to immediately implement pagination and the formatting that goes with it PLUS all of the other things App Creators want out of report generation.
But all is not lost! Look at integrating with a service that provides professional reporting. You will likely get a better result anyway.
By the way, this is direction of software - integrating several services together where an App Creator can get expert results from ALL of their services - as opposed to mediocre results from one-stop shop!
Yes, I understand and its a common misconception by many that just because companies are under the same umbrella that they are all one big factory of employees. It’s not true at all. Those companies operate independently of each other - in every way, EXCEPT when it serves the bigger corporate picture.
When it comes to getting services from each other, of course they may get priority over “external” customers - but NOT always.
Sure, although it seems that Google wants the opposite. They want to go to internal tools even if those are not the best
Corporations operate on a whole other level. As I said before, Google is an assembly of different companies. What Google is doing is trying to place all those individual professional services in one place so business don’t have to go shopping around for them. Assembling services together in one place is different than Google attempting to build ALL of its own in-house set of services.
A case in point, Google had its own internal app creation tool called “App Maker” (i think was its name) before they acquired AppSheet. I don’t know if “App Maker” was previously acquired or not but Google recognized that the tool they had did not meet the path they wished to take and replaced it with AppSheet.
Of course, once acquired, the services get “Googlified” just like what is happening to AppSheet. Hopefully not so much that the service falls out of favor. Time will tell!
Yep, we are on the same page
Appsheet recently launched integration with Looker Studio which is an expert in reporting and dashboarding. You can set up integration with it for richer dashboards to share with stakeholders.
Looker studio also has feature to download reports as pdf which might meet your requirements (i personally don’t have any experience with it).
Sure, although it seems that Google wants the opposite. They want to go to internal tools even if those are not the best
This has to be done most of the times because third party tools don’t meet the rigorous privacy, security and compliance standards. Personally I feel, it is better to not have a feature that having a security leak.