Request for Help: Feedback for Students

AppSheet AppSheet Q&A
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Hi all,

Novice AppSheet user here. I am building an app for teachers to give feedback to students. Once all teachers have provided feedback for their respective classes for each student, I want to use AppSheet to create a PDF report that compiles all of the feedback for a particular student.

Teachers fill out a form in the Feedback table that pulls in referenced information from a Students table (just student names) and a Classes table (Class names, competencies, course goals, etc). Ultimately, there will be different about 7 different rows in the Feedback table that are associated with each student (because each student will be getting feedback for each of their 7 classes).

I am struggling to figure out how to get the multiple Feedback rows per student into a report. My plan/thinking was to create a different table (say the Reports table) where each student has only one row. Then, I would pull the different data from each separate Feedback row that is associated with the student into columns in Reports table. But I am struggling to figure out how (despite spending lots of time trying to figure it out).

My questions:

  1. Does it even make sense to do it this way? Or is there some quicker way in which I can accomplish the same goal? For example, is it possible to simply create a Report Template that filters the data from Feedback by student name and prints out all rows in Feedback that match that student name?
  2. If my original thinking makes sense, how would I do it?

Any and all thoughts appreciated!

Cheers!

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What you have described is certainly doable. However, I would create the following tables. (Others may very well have different structures)

  • students, classes, teachers, student class registrations and feedback.

Here students, classes (includes a ref to teachers), teachers are straight forward.

Student Class Registrations and feedback have a parent-child relationship

SCL

  • SCL_id, ref to student, ref to class

Feedback

  • FB_id, SCL_id, feedback

Reporting would be something like below using create a create a new file task

  • Students (base table)
    • class (Start: SELECT(SCL[key], [student id] = [_thisrow-1].[student id])
      • Feedback (Start: SELECT(feedback[key], [SCL_id] = [_thisrow-1].[SCL_id]))

Having said all of this, you need to consider how you design UX depending on who is managing what data, which drives, for example, what dropdown list constraints should be added to avoid unnecessary data errors, ease of use, etc.

You need to learn AppSheet specific techniques (as well as basic relational database design principles) to accomplish all this and if you do not have time and resources to do it yourself, you might want to consider getting professional support. I am sure you can find it easily from one of the community contributors with in-depth knowledge.

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Thank you! This was super useful!

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