BOOOOOM đź’Ą - Change Source Sheet

@david, @Mark @Jason @JackVaughan

Glide Team you’re AMAZING - this new ability is a life change event for me - THANKS!!!

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nice. what will you use it for?

Many times I need to do massive changes in my sheet so now instead of working on the live production file I can do this elsewhere, do all my testing and when the file is ready just replace it with the old one and add the new functionality to my app w/o the users knowing and w/o needing to duplicate the app and change URL

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@yinon_raviv quick question - how do you synchronise any changes made by the users on the live app sheet with the data on the new sheet?

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Just wanna chime in, I develop many MVPs for clients and sometimes I do have to insert scripts in there. When they duplicate the app over, the scripts are not transferred over. With this I can let them change the source sheet to the original one so I don’t have to take care of that part anymore.

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So I’m looking at an app I have on the bench, checking out the new feature. The sheet shown here isn’t the sheet driving my app, and even weirder: the sheet driving the app doesn’t even have a tab called “Coffee Shop”.

@Mark @david

image

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A live App may have many formulas within its GDE pointing to G.S. # 1 (which usually has its own formulas (e.g. Arrayformulas, commands, google scripts, zapier, stripe, etc.).

Repointing to another data source file, we have three challenges:

  1. There is no way to test the live App (off-hours) pointing to G.S. # 2 without needing to calibrate all the GDE formulas to work with new changes in G.S. # 2 (and of course, reverse all that back if not yet ready to stick to G.S. # 2)
  2. Duplicate the Google Scripts that are linked with G.S. # 1 (or build variables and paths to switch environment)
  3. Live data migration from G.S. # 1 to G.S. # 2 if we want the live App to remain pointing to G.S. # 2.

I frankly can’t see how I can utilize this feature for testing purposes on a live App and not duplicate the App!!

We need to understand the “driving science” or rational that drove Glide to introduce this feature.

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@adelhammoud I think it was mostly those that needed a way to duplicate admin and user apps while still allowing the duplicated apps to point to a single sheet. Before, there was no possible way to create a duplicate of an admin/user combo that could still share a sheet.

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Thanks Jeff. That makes since in this case, multiple apps pointing to same sheet. I did have a feature request to have one App pointing to multiple google sheets files.

That would be greatly beneficial.

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I’m intrigued by this feature. I don’t know all of my uses currently but a couple that come to mind are:

  1. Duplicating a Google Sheet and then using the “new” Spreadsheet I can have Glide reference this new one and archive my old / finished one. I am thinking of specific budgets templates that I use but need to swap out based on particular projects. This would (theoretically) allow my team to never have to update their previously installed glide app and I can dictate what information shows up.
  2. In creating some test apps with dummy information, when my client / team has decided on the final look and feel, I’ll easily be able to switch over to the official / live version that was simultaneously being developed, yet keep my dummy data.

I do conference operations and see this being handy to switch around data yet make it easy for my attendees / users in that they don’t have to re-“download” my app. Would this be accurate?

Thanks Glide! I’m sure I’ll find some uses for this feature (I know I had this idea previously, but the specific use-case is not coming back to me, haha).

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Yeah … Boom.

As in it BROKE my entire app.

Which I knew it would do, as I got an error when I tried to replace one Sheet with another. One that I had just copied from the other so it had EVERYTHING that the original sheet had.

But no, Glide decided that tabs in the sheet were missing (even though in the Data view they are still there because they are literally…STILL THERE).

So I hit the button anyway, to remove the “Features” just to see what mayhem would ensure.

And it has removed EVERYTHING.

There is no App left. Which is fun :slight_smile:

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I don’t know if this is related or not, but in the past I have removed columns in my sheet, that should no longer be needed, if an effort to do some clean up. Sometimes those columns were still referred to somewhere in the app and I got the same error message. When I restore the column I removed, I have had problems with Glide still not syncing with the sheet (even with a reload) and the message won’t go away.

I’ve found that if I just wait long enough, or force a data change on the sheet or in the app, then glide will resync and see the column has been put back. Maybe if this happens again, just give it a little bit of time for it to maybe “catch up”.

It is so quick to build in Glide that I put it back again quite quickly and a little neater this time :slight_smile:

I am not sure it really should have removed everything, so may well have another test and be a bit more patient.

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Make a copy of the app before you test next time. :wink:

Sounds like a bug, but I haven’t every had to switch sheets. Maybe some new glide features are creating conflicts with changing sheets???

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