AppSheet Data Management: Slices, Workflows, and Data Sources

AppSheet Data Source Options

• 💡 AppSheet supports diverse data sources, including its native AppSheet database, spreadsheets (Excel, Google Sheets), databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle, BigQuery), and provider services (Google Drive, Dropbox, Salesforce).
• 🧩 Data from multiple sources can be combined within a single AppSheet app.

Configuring Data Structure in AppSheet

• 🏗️ AppSheet acts as a data modeling platform, requiring a data source before app building.
• 🗂️ Tables represent real-world entities (people, objects, events) and form the app's data hierarchy.
• ⚙️ Table settings, configured via the gear icon, cascade down to columns, slices, and views, allowing for high-level permission management (e.g., read-only).

Column Types and Properties

• 🏷️ AppSheet automatically infers column names and types from the data source, but these can be customized.
• 🔢 Common data types include Date, DateTime, Enum (dropdown), EnumList (multi-select dropdown), Email, Address, and Image.
• 🔑 A key column is essential for uniquely identifying each row and must have a constant, unique value.
• Formula columns can be computed automatically using app formulas or set with initial values for new rows.
• 👁️‍🗨️ Properties like Label, Show, Editable, and Required control column visibility, editability, and data integrity.

Virtual Columns and Table References

• 💻 Virtual columns are computed values that don't exist in the original data source, often used for combining data (e.g., full name from first and last names) or creating complex conditions.
• 🔗 References create connections between tables, allowing for representation of relationships and easy retrieval of related data. AppSheet automatically generates reverse reference columns.

Data Slicing for Focused Views

• 🎯 Slices allow users to create filtered subsets of a table, displaying only specific rows, columns, or actions.
• 📝 Slices are useful for creating targeted views, such as showing only pending tasks for a specific user.
• 🛠️ Slices can be built without code using the AppSheet editor, and then applied to UX views to customize the app's interface.