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Hello AppSheet Community,
One of the team’s goals is to make it easier for all app creators to build applications by bringing focus to the core concepts and tasks and by providing information and “shortcuts” in the relevant context.
We’re excited to announce new usability improvements to the App Editor with two changes rolling out starting today.
First, we’re changing the navigation menu and introducing a new “Settings'' section. The narrow menu rearranges the order of the options. The new “Settings” section gathers together all app-wide settings and makes it more intuitive for all app creators to find these types of settings. Other areas of the Editor will now also look simpler and will let app creators focus on the key and most frequent tasks they need to do to build their apps.
New left navigation menu with the “Settings” menu option selected
Second, AppSheet now lets you build Slices in the context of a View. Previously, if you were in a View and wanted to filter your data, you needed to navigate away from the “UX” section and go to “Data > Slices”. We’re now giving app creators a shortcut to build that Slice. New app creators will be able to discover this functionality more easily while app creators who already know AppSheet well will be able to create and edit Slices a little bit faster.
We’re making these changes because our user research showed that some of the navigation menu options were not intuitive, e.g. “UX”, “Behavior”, that it wasn’t clear which AppSheet concepts users should be focusing on to start building an app, e.g. “Actions” vs “Offline Sync”, and that it was difficult to connect these concepts together.
Now, these two changes are part of a larger redesign of the App Editor. They are the first in a series that will be deployed over the coming months. Combined together, we’re hoping these changes will help new app creators discover how to leverage key AppSheet concepts and that they will save existing app creators time. We’ll announce future changes as we roll them out.
The new navigation menu with the “Settings” option will be available to everyone in the coming days. You can revert to the legacy navigation menu if you’re facing an issue. Details are in the FAQ section below.
The new path to create Slices will be rolled out to everyone in the coming days. You can still build Slices the way you used to if that’s what you prefer.
Try these changes out and let us know if you have any feedback.
Thank you
The AppSheet team
FAQs
How do I opt in and out of the navigational changes?
App creators can currently opt-in and out of the navigation changes at will. The changes apply to the App Editor experience, independent of the app you are editing. You can opt in and out by clicking on this icon in the top navigation bar (highlighted in the green box below).
Can I opt out of the feature that lets me create and edit Slices in the context of a View?
No. You don’t have to use it. You can always create a Slice from the navigation menu (in Data > Slices).
Is there some documentation?
Yes, we’re updating the relevant pages in our documentation. We’re also introducing a new page that summarizes the changes across the Editor. See Summary of navigation improvements in the app editor (preview).
Where do I report issues and provide feedback?
Contact Support or directly in this thread
Are you planning on maintaining the two navigation models?
Long term, no, we’re moving towards the new navigational model. For the next few months, we will support both navigation models as we make additional changes to how people navigate through the Editor. We want to work out the kinks before it becomes the only one.
When will the legacy navigational model be unavailable?
We don’t have a hard set date on this. That will depend on how fast we can work out the kinks in the new editor experience, but we’re hoping to complete the transition towards the end of the year.
What is a Slice?
A Slice lets you filter records and columns in a View. See our doc page for more info.
Why don’t I see anything yet?
We’re rolling out these changes progressively and it might take a full week before you can see them in your own account.
It is great that we now have the capability to navigate straight to a column definition using buttons next the column list in a View. See image.
What would be even more useful is if we could get the same ability for nested actions. See second image.
Cool feature in Views to go straight to column definitions
Can we get a similar capability in Actions where indicated in image??
I assume there was a roll out today, my trainees just got the new interface.
First of all, thank you for the great job you and your team made so far, really appreciated.
I would like to report a few bugs on this roll-out:
1) blank space on right side, on Actions panel:
I use large screen because...editing columns requires it, for comfort 🙂
2) When modifying a column name directly in the app editor under Data > Columns, when getting out of the input field (for "validating" the entry), we get immediately switched back to first table edition, although we are working on another table.
The change made persists, which is ok and expected, but being thrown visually on another table is in my opinion an unexpected behavior.
Thanks as always for your consideration !
