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

How AppSheet apps are generally built

Whenever you create a new app, these basic steps are always followed:

  1. First, you prepare the data source, usually a spreadsheet on a cloud platform such as Google Drive.
  2. Next, you connect the data source to AppSheet. After you connect the data, AppSheet will automatically generate the app for you.
  3. Once the data is connected, the app development process moves to the AppSheet Editor. Through the AppSheet Editor, you define how the connected data will be used and configure various app settings, including creating actions for data manipulation and navigation, designing views and layout, and adding automation bots.
  4. You can invite test users to try the app for further improvement.
  5. When the app is ready, AppSheet provides an easy way to deploy the app to your team and colleagues.

In summary, those five steps are as follows:

  1. Connecting the data source
  2. Editing your app definition
  3. Deploying the app

By reading this book, you will learn the basic sequence of this app development process. All app developments occur in the AppSheet Editor. We will be covering all the important details of these steps to learn how to configure your app through the AppSheet Editor in the upcoming chapters.