Book Image

Democratizing Application Development with AppSheet

By : Koichi Tsuji, Suvrutt Gurjar, Takuya Miyai
Book Image

Democratizing Application Development with AppSheet

By: Koichi Tsuji, Suvrutt Gurjar, Takuya Miyai

Overview of this book

Many citizen developers regularly use spreadsheets in their business and day-to-day jobs. With AppSheet, you can take your spreadsheets to the next level by enhancing their ease of use. The platform allows you to run your business efficiently and manage it in the field outside of an office or indoor environment. This book enables you to create your own simple or medium to complex hybrid apps for business or personal use. As a beginner to AppSheet, this book will show you how the AppSheet Editor works and how it is used to configure, test, and deploy an app and share it with others as users or co-authors. You’ll learn about widely used features such as how to use data sources, create app views and actions, construct expressions with AppSheet functions, and make your app secure through security and UX options. Next, you’ll create email/attachment templates and develop reports/documents based on templates, store in the cloud, and send files through emails. You’ll also understand how to integrate third-party services and monitor various usage statistics of your app. As you progress, you’ll explore various features with the help of sample apps that you create using the book. By the end of this book, you’ll have learned how to make the most of AppSheet to build powerful and efficient applications.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Part 1 – Introduction and Getting Started
3
Part 2 – App Editor and Main Features
10
Part 3 – Advanced Features and External Services
14
Part 4 – App Templates and Tricks for App Building

Summary

Throughout this chapter, we have introduced several practical techniques you can implement in your apps to improve the style of your app views and also extend the capabilities of your apps.

QuickChart provides better insight into the data you present to app users at a glance and makes your app look more professional with modern styling. Rather than reading the number as text, or the percentage or ratio as a plain number, presenting it in the form of a graphic chart will make it easy to read and visually appealing.

A QR code can be used anywhere, and in any type of app you develop. You may have an inventory management app where you have a collection of products with a PRODUCT_ID column. When a new product comes into stock, the app user needs to keep a record by adding new data through the app. Instead of manually typing or selecting the product from a drop-down list, you can present a scanning function where the user scans the QR code attached to the product to instantly...