Does anyone use an entity diagraming tool they might suggest to help with designing data and relationships before building out the app?
Also, can relationships only be built between Glide tables/sheets or can I create a relationship ‘recipe’ in Google Sheets or between other sources?
Thanks,
Terry
Not aware of any diagram in tool.
But yes, you can use vlookup in Gsheet to mimic Glide lookups, but why ?
Hi Terry 
When you add sources to your Glide app, whether these are Glide tables or Google Sheets/Excel/Airtable/etc., these appear in the Glide Data Editor as additional tables. You can create relations between these tables, irrespective of the source.
As Killko mentioned, you could also create “relations” directly within your sources. In Excel or Google Sheets for instance, this could be achieved with vlookup, index+match, possibly xlookup across sheets in the same spreasheet. In Airtable, with linked records across tables within your base.
As for tools to create diagrams, I am unfamiliar with what an entity diagramming tool is, however I have used Miro and LucidChart, these might offer what you need to create diagrams.
Hi,
As a non-IT person, I may be completely misunderstanding what you are asking. But when you say “diagram” and “design data and relationships before building,” I infer you may want to “see” the app outside of the limited visual that the Glide Data Editor provides. I was going crazy during my first build as I was learning Glide, so I created the chart below.
It identifies my google sheets columns, Glide-specific columns/functions, relationships, arrays, look ups, computed columns, user-specific columns…everything! Now I can truly see what I am building as well as brainstorm and solve problems.
What a beautiful chart! How did you create the colored arrows, I would have no idea how to do that. 
I working through 1.) learning Glide, which is super simple, and 2.) trying to figure out how much I should include in the app. Diagraming it out first is like having a blueprint before you build it.
@fluittsolutions - what did you use to create you diagram (ERD)?
It’s just MS Excel!
Basic Excel drawing tools. This is how your database looks in MS Access. Excel really is just a 2 dimensional simple database. The relationships make it a 3D database so I thought why don’t I just create the visual that Access uses behind its related tables.
Neat idea. I don’t use Excel, only Google Sheets. I’ll have to look around if drawing tools are available in GS. Thanks for the tip!
We use FigJam at Glide.
keep in simple…genius. Thank you for sharing that.
Thank you David for sharing that. I checked them out…ok, now I see.
Hi @david are there any plans to incorporate a view of all the “screens” in an app showing how they’re linked/triggered by each other ?
Glide is fantastically simple to use, but as soon as one starts building bigger apps, it gets difficult to understand the structure and flow, especially when one comes back to the app weeks or months later…
Another issue is that while it’s easy to independently visualise and work on Tabs, many screens only appear for edit once you follow the logic in the app (ex. Detail, Form, Edit or New screens when clicking on a button or worse, triggered/created by an Action).
It would be awesome, if all screens could be seen like Tabs on the left side of the development environment for easy editing or even cloning…
The biggest issue I have is with Screens created say through a Show New Screen Action.
I worked on some screens for hours, only to see that work vanish, because I decided to try some new Action flow. As far as I understand it, once one removes a Show New Screen Action, the screen one built for it, just disappears and can’t be recovered…
But, keep up the amazing work, I love the simplicity and power of Glide! 
One trick I have found that helps with this is to locate a column that you know is referenced in that screen, do a Find all Uses on that column, and then you can navigate directly to the “hidden” screen.
Actually, I’d have to say that Find all Uses is without a doubt the best feature that Glide have added in recent times in terms of helping developer productivity. It makes such a huge difference. No more making changes to a column, and then praying that you haven’t broken something in the process because you can’t remember where else in the app that column is referenced from.
Agreed, this is a trap.
I find that it’s generally a good practice to make a copy of such screens (or at least the component that the action is attached to) before messing too much with the actions. But, it would be nice if you didn’t have to remember to do that…
Yup, Find All Uses is a Life Saver especially when you encounter Sheets sync issues…
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