Further usability improvements: simplifying navigation in the Editor

[Arthur_Rallu]

Hello AppSheet Community,

One of the team’s goals is to make it easier for all app creators to build applications by bringing focus to the core concepts and tasks and by providing information and “shortcuts” in the relevant context. We rolled out some of these changes in October and shared this initial announcement.

We’re now excited to announce 2 new updates are starting to roll out today. They are follow-ups to the October changes.

First, we’re introducing a secondary navigation that lets you see at a quick glance all your components - whether we’re talking about is your data, your views, format rules, actions and automation components. This should also let you access any individual component more quickly.

As part of this change, suggestions will be available for all components and will be more targeted based on the context you are in (e.g. which Table you are creating a Format Rule for). You’ll also notice that error and warning messages are now shown via a status icon that is always visible in the header.

Secondary navigation menu (left) and Error & Warning status in header bar (top right)

Second, in the same spirit as earlier changes and to be able to make a specific edit to your app without jumping into a different context, there are more direct links in your View component to the table, column or action that you want to check or edit. For example, when you are working on a Deck View, you should not need to click 3, 4 or even 5 times just to check the settings of a column or of an action. This should make more obvious what is possible, especially for users who are new to AppSheet, and make navigation throughout your app components faster.

GIF showing accessing relevant components quickly and editing them on the fly

The secondary navigation menu and its associated changes will be available to everyone. Similarly to the primary navigation menu rolled out in October, you can revert to the legacy navigation patterns if you’re facing an issue. Details are in the FAQ section below.

Let us know if you have any feedback.

Thank you

The AppSheet Team

FAQ

How do I opt in and out of the navigational changes?

App creators can currently opt-in and out of the navigation changes at will. The changes apply to the App Editor experience, independent of the app you are editing. You can opt in and out by clicking on this icon in the top navigation bar.

Is there some documentation?

Yes, we’re updating the relevant pages in our documentation. We’re also introducing a new page that summarizes the changes across the Editor. See Summary of improvements in the app editor (preview).

Where do I report issues and provide feedback?

Contact Support or directly in this thread.

Are you planning on maintaining the two navigation models?

Long term, no, we’re moving towards the new navigational model. For the next few months, we will support both navigation models as we make additional changes to how people navigate through the Editor. We want to work out the kinks before it becomes the only one.

When will the legacy navigational model be unavailable?

We don’t have a hard set date on this. That will depend on how fast we can work out the kinks in the new navigation.

Why don’t I see anything yet?

We’re rolling out these changes progressively and it might take a few days to a few weeks before you can see them in your own account.

I provided some feedback on the previous changes (from October). Are you taking it into account?

We did read the feedback provided by our community. We may not have addressed it yet - whether it’s making an update or it’s deciding not to make any changes.

[Marc_Dillon]

Mostly, I really like these new updates. Actually, the more I look at it, I really, really, like them.

But here is one major downfall to me. I never like doing any work in the right side panel. I always open up my Tasks in the main center panel when I’m setting them up. I just can’t focus on the “task” at hand in such a small view-pane, or something like that. But you have seemingly disabled this option completely, for any unlinked tasks.

Even by creating 2 tasks, one linkable, one unlinked, I was hoping to expose the option to see the unlinked one in full view, but nope.

The option to view unlinked tasks seems to be completely missing from here now.

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One other separate item. Can you please give the option to disable the suggestion pop-ups everytime you click to add an element (slice,view,action,bot,etc…). I just want it to add a new blank item and not be bothered by this pop-up.

[Marc_Dillon]

I’m most thrilled about this:

I’m always building complex groups of actions, but it’s a huge pain to switch between them when you need to check a detail of another action, then come right back to the other one. This new left side panel with the actions listed per table, in collapsible sections… man that’s going to improve my app editing efficiency by so much!

Same for the new table/columns view. Brilliant!

And separating system-generated views from manually-created reference views? Noice.

What kind of timeline are you envisioning for this to be rolled out to paid and/or Enterprise accounts?

[Koichi_Tsuji]

@Arthur_Rallu

The useful feature to add table through “hint” is now missing on new editable layout… Any plan to revive it?

Or is there somewhere, I just missing something?

@takuya_miyai

[Arthur_Rallu]

It’s available from the “Add data” modal, at the bottom. The app creator may need to scroll down if they have a lot of data sources.

[Koichi_Tsuji]

Ah!!! Thank you, I got it.

In the meantime, it is (was on the legacy editor) not really responsible sometime. After add new table to spreadsheet then we refresh the editor. If we are lucky, we could see new table as hint. Sometime we do not see new table after heavy re-load the browser to refresh the editor. I was not sure why we could see and not see the new table. This was also corrected?

[Aurelien]

Hi @Arthur_Rallu

I discovered the new evolution before your post, I reported a bug on the other thread: can you have a look at it ?

https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Announcements/Usability-improvements-simplifying-navigation-in-the-Editor-and/m-p/496961#M5748

[Aurelien]

@Arthur_Rallu Some inconsistency in the app editor interface here

[Koichi_Tsuji]

@Aurelien yes, we also see such as skelton type of UX sometimes…Obviously either background color or z-index type of the issue in terms of CSS with AppSheet possibly.

[benhare]

Thanks Marc! I’m glad you like the changes. Paid accounts should be getting the changes before the Holidays, for Enterprise we’re a bit more cautious as we want to give them time to adjust so I don’t know exactly when we’ll roll it out to them, but probably early in the new year. It’s a big adjustment.

[benhare]

Noted, thank you @Aurelien I will log it and see what’s going on.

[aneeshatgoogle]

This might have improved a little bit with recent changes. However, sometimes you don’t see it immediately after adding a spreadsheet due to caching (which should usually resolve in 10-15 minutes).

However, I do take your feedback and will try to see if we can make this more efficient or add an option to force pull accessible sheets.

[takuya_miyai]

Hi @Arthur_Rallu

For screen sizes larger than FHD, a large white space is created between the main area and the emulator.
In addition, the column setting displays a horizontal scroll bar, and that white space is also not being utilized.

[Kirk_Masden]

It looks to me like the search feature in Data has been significantly degraded. I used to be able to search for columns. Now I only seem to be able to search for names of tables. Obviously, since the tables are relatively few in number, the ability to search for a table is less important than the ability to search for a specific column name (some apps may have over 1000 columns!!). Am I missing something?

[Kirk_Masden]

Fortunately, the legacy editing interface is still available. I just used it to find the column that prompted my comment.

[marizmelo]

This should not happen, thank you for reporting Takuya.

[marizmelo]

Column search will be addressed soon, thank you for the comment Kirk.

[benhare]

Yeah you’ll note that it actually will filter tables by tables that include the column - but isn’t at present filtering the schema view itself (I missed that), we will address that.

[Aurelien]

Hi @Arthur_Rallu @benhare @marizmelo

Here an additional behavior, sorry for reporting it that late:

As you see, when editing a column name and clicking out of the field, the creator gets back to the first table pane.

[Koichi_Tsuji]

@Arthur_Rallu

This is quick feedback out of my feelings.

Various exsiting “function” to set our apps up through the editor, the new layout / style is placing bunch of action icons.

For example, the table settings looks like this.

My concerns are the icon is not perfectly appealing to the app creator, expecially starter and intermediate ones. Presenting the available options and action by means of shaped action with texts, it will be more appealing and more intuitive from my point of view.

Also, three dots action icon is wrapping other available options items, but my thought was it could be difficult for beginners and intermediate app crators to found out what sort of options could be available for them, as they are “deeply nested” behind those three dot icons.

As I shared with the screenshot above, there are ample space available for the header where those action icons are placed, so better to show more actions as much as possble rather than nesting them behind such three dots icons.