January 12, 2023

AppSheet Release Notes
1

Deployment Time: 3:15 PM PST

Features & enhancements

Item Description
Enhancement You can now reorder groups when setting up authentication group access to an app. This functionality had not been displaying the reordering correctly.
Enhancement For desktop UI (preview), the Sync indicator now shows when an automatic background sync is in progress.

Bug fixes

Item Description
Bug For desktop UI (preview), a bug was fixed for Desktop UI drill-down tree not updating after user-defined filter is applied.

![lizlynch_0-1673566230364.png
Bug Navigation bar header on new automation was disappearing. We added in some fixes that inadvertently caused the header to be able to get hidden on the new bots page.
Bug Add tooltips in table, detail, and deck views when hovering over inline and prominent actions. This update will be rolled out gradually.

Rollout changes

None

Preview announcements

Preview feature releases enable you to try out new app features that are not yet fully supported. See Product launch stages.

  • No new preview features were released today.

What’s currently available in Preview?

The following tables summarize the preview features that are currently available.

Item Description
Feature AppSheet databases (Preview)

The new AppSheet database feature is now in preview release. An AppSheet database is a first-party, native data source for organizing and managing data powering AppSheet apps. An AppSheet database provides an easy and efficient way to build data models for any AppSheet app without needing to use an external data source solution such as cloud-based spreadsheets or databases.



For more information, see:

- Community announcement
- AppSheet databases
Enhancement Navigation improvements in AppSheet app editor (Preview)

The app editor includes navigation improvements, currently in preview, to facilitate the configuration of specific features. For example, the new Settings section in the left navigation gathers together all app-wide settings and makes it more intuitive for all app creators to find these types of settings.



For more information, see:

- Community announcement
- Summary of navigation improvements in the app editor (Preview).
Enhancement Additional usability improvements in AppSheet app editor (Preview)

The app editor includes navigation and app setting improvements, currently in preview, to facilitate the configuration of specific features. The navigation improvements now include a secondary navigation panel that lets you quickly scan all of your components. In addition, there are more direct links in your View component to the table, column, or action that you want to check or edit. Finally, error and warning messages are more prominently displayed in the app.



For more information, see:

- Further usability improvements: Simplifying the navigation in the editor
- Summary of improvements in the app editor (preview).
Feature AppSheet apps for desktop users (Preview)

The new desktop design, currently in preview, is optimized for desktop browsers, presenting a more complete view of information with a consistent organization and structure. The new desktop design lets users navigate their apps more easily and access information in context, and provides an efficient way to edit existing records without losing context. The legacy desktop design, enabled by default, provides an experience similar to the mobile and tablet device.



For more information, see:

- Community article
- Optimize the user experience using the new desktop design (Preview)

The following features require opt-in to the AppSheet preview program. The AppSheet Preview program lets app creators try out new app features that are not yet fully supported.

Item Description
Feature Table view

Table View now supports freezing the first column while scrolling horizontally. For details, see Freezing the first Column of a Table View - in Preview Program.
Feature Chart Editor

App Creators can now make use of our new chart editor and the new and improved charts it can create. Learn more.
Feature Detail views

Rich text formatting is now available in Detail views. For details, see this announcement in the community.
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Hi @lizlynch This is working in Detail view. But do you think this makes sence?

Fabian_Weller_0-1673610686877.png

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It just doubles the action’s Display name.

In Table and Deck view I cannot see this improvement. When will it be rolled out?

Caution: We now have to add meaningful display names to all of our actions!

Adding @Kirk_Masden @WillowMobileSys @Austin

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Thank you, @Fabian_Weller ! Yes, please do address situations where tools tips are redundant and therefore distracting.

Here’s where I wrote about that:

https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/AppSheet-Q-A/Bug-Meaningless-showing-of-display-name-on-mouse-hover-over-text/m-p/496001

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@lizlynch

First, I do not see the “tooltip” on Inline actions - just a black “spot” that covers the icon. Maybe the fix is not completely rolled out? I have been seeing this issue for months now.

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@Kirk_Masden @Fabian_Weller

Agreed! For Prominent actions, it does not make sense because the name is already displayed. For Primary/Overlay and Inline actions it does.

Since the “tooltip” is pulled from the action display name, there are basically 2 choices:

  1. For consistency, treat all actions the same with regard to “tooltips”.
  2. Prevent showing of “tooltips” for Prominent actions.

I think hover ability was intended to show action names for Primary and Inline actions. If this is ALL they will ever do then Option 2 above makes the most sense.

However, I would like to see this “tooltip” ability used as, well… an actual tooltip and not just a display label! This requires an EXTRA property specifically for the “tooltip” text. This would give us the most flexibility to provide HELPFUL info to the users.

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The tooltips haven’t been rolled out yet, and yes they should resolve the issue of tooltips going over the inline action labels.
In the new version we still show the tooltip below the action in detail view however, it’s just that it’s also below the label in case that the action name is too long to be shown.

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@lizlynch

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Apologies! Did not realize that the tooltips bug was part of a rollout! Updated the note above and will include rollout status in future release notes. Thank you!

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I see. This would be better than the current situation. However, I have a question about “in case that the action name is too long to be shown.” Couldn’t you program in something that would determine whether or not the label was long enough to make the “too long” issue a possibility and then only have the tooltips show is such cases? It seems to me that the vast majority of users have to live with unwanted redundancy for the benefit of a few creators who use long labels.

P.S. Please note that even in the multiline “Go to Filtered View” example you provided, no new information is provided by the tooltip!!

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Agreed! I’ll add that to the backlog. We can add that logic to detect that we will not be able to show the entire label but it’s surprisingly non-trivial. I think you’d agree we have other priorities on this page that we should get to first :).

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@Kirk_Masden

For this backlog item…

…it would be of greater benefit to separate the Tooltip text from the Display name altogether. I.e. provide a Tooltip property that is configured independently from the Display name. This provides the best flexibility and usability of the feature to cover ALL App Creator needs - even the case where we would want to prevent the Tooltip from showing at all.

All the functional pieces are there, The feature would just pull from a dedicated Tooltip property field. The only real effort, at this juncture, would be to insert that field to configure the Tooltip text.

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That’s not a bad idea, it’s definitely worth discussing with our UX team.

One thing to keep in mind however is that we are trying to make it easier to make Accessible AppSheet apps, and having information that’s only available via tooltip is a accessibility antipattern. There’s probably value in having giving actions the ability to specify a display name AND an explanation text that’s displayed inline and as a tooltip respectively, and find some way to show the explanation text in an accessible way for those who can’t access it, but now it is a more involved feature than just adding a way to add a customized tooltip.

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I’m not sure I fully understand your vision, @PatW , but I think @WillowMobileSys 's idea is great.

One more idea: As I have written before (I think), I would like to have a toggle in the editor that would display the actual names of actions (not the display names). This would help me find the actions I need to change. But, this would only be for the editor; I wouldn’t want people using the app to see this.

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Or, alternatively, be able to search actions (and views and columns) by display name. Of course, there’s complexity since display names can be dynamic based on expressions, but some creative, incremental functionality in this direction would be handy.

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There seems to be an update to the tooltips.

https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Release-Notes/January-24-2023/bc-p/530933/highlight/true#M1510