Forcing user to email log in screen

I need new and old users to access the app by inputting their email address so the system reads what user is logged on. I have the Privacy set to “Limited to emails in user profiles”. However, if I send the link to the app to anyone who has previously logged on, then it skips this step and results in an unwanted result: the logged in user is not associated with their log in email. I think it might be a cookie/caching issue happening on individual devices. I want to force every user to see the log in screen every time. Any help is appreacited.

Cheers!

@Darren_Murphy thanks for your help before. maybe this is something you can inform on

So you didn’t have this privacy setup before? Anyone can log in on a previous version of the app?

Hey Thinh,

Not sure exactly what you’re asking. However, my current settings allow Users with approved emails listed in the Users sheet access to the app. I am using a few friends and their emails/phones to check the app in real time. They tell me that once they click the link in an email or open the link in the text, they completely bypass the email log in screen and go directly to the “start” screen.

The reason this is an issue is that I need each individual user to Preview the app according to their email so that specific photos and info shows up on different pages.

Does that make sense? Happy to add snapshot or LOOM video if needed.

Yeah, granted I haven’t had much experience with a whitelisted app, a video would do. Thanks a lot!

Yes, Glide will set an authentication cookie the first time a user logs in. So when they subsequently open the app, there is no need to sign in again.

But…

Just because a user hasn’t been through the sign-in screen, that doesn’t mean that the “system” doesn’t know who they are. The user is still signed in, and Glide knows which user it is, and you can access that information as well though the “Currently Signed In User” special value that is available pretty much anywhere.

Is that what you’re looking for?

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It looks like it was a cache/cookie storage issue. After asking them to delete their history, they were able to go straight to the email log in screen. Not sure if something else was off as well, but it seems to go to that screen now.

The currently signed in user is something I try to use. however, somehow the system creates an entirely new line with a unique email every time a new person logs in. It’s the extra line that is causing the issue.

Well, that’s what’s supposed to happen.
But it shouldn’t happen when an existing user signs in for the second or subsequent time.
Does that happen?
If it does, then that suggests that something isn’t configured correctly.
Do you have any actions anywhere that add rows to your User Profiles table?

oh… just had a thought - you mentioned a new “unique” email. Do you have the “Collect Real Email Addresses” option selected?

If you’re using an email whitelist, and are pre-populating your Users sheet with email addresses, and you don’t have that option selected, then that could be the source of your issue.

There are no extra rows written anywhere (I believe). I’ll do an audit of the whole app next.

Does an existing user include someone who I wrote into the User Profile tab (i.e. Name, Email, Image) but has NOT ever used the system? I don’t know if that is what is happening.

Above is a screenshot of a User I put into the system who had never accessed it before. Once they put their completed the FORM sheet I wanted their info to be populated into the pre-created row associated with the email through a series of RELATIONS/LOOKUP columns.

However, this new line was created with that unique email.

I did NOT have the radio button selected. Maybe that will solve some issues ¯_(ツ)_/¯

^^^

The image below is what I want the final tab to look like

But because of the new line created by the system, it does not pull the correct photo through the LOOKUP column because technically it is not viewing the profile as the intended User with the correct email.

Can you elaborate a bit more on this bit?
Is that form adding a new row, or updating an existing row?
Which table is it writing to?

Just to be clear - when a new user signs in, if their email address already exists in the User Profiles sheet, then Glide will match them with that row. If their email doesn’t exist in the User Profiles sheet, then a new row will be created, and this happens at the time that they sign in.

The User Profiles sheet is pre-populated with User emails and info (like you would expect), but every user adds in their own team-specific data through a FORM sheet. This data writes to a separate sheet that has a long list of IF/THEN, SINGLE VALUE, and MATH columns to calculate accrued points for each team as they progress through the game.

I created a RELATIONS column in the Users tab so I could make LOOKUP columns for all the data the user put into the FORM.

The reason I did it this way is because I needed the data in the solitary-page (points sheet) to be connected with the User profile sheet using the same email as the connector. The DONE! tab aggregates everything (Names, Mascot, Points, Photos) as a summary for each team. The only way I could get that final page to look the way I intended is by sourcing the tab from the solitary page sheet and connecting the User Profiles info through a LOOKUP. Complicated but it was the only solution I found as a workaround.

Okay, that all sounds fine.

Has changing the setting to collect real emails resolved your original problem?

I notice that most of the columns in your solitary-page table are user specific. Is there a good reason why you made them user specific? Generally you would only do that if you want all users to be able to write to the same row.

In the form that writes to the solitary-page table, are you asking the user to enter their email address, or are you using the signed-in user email address special value?

I will need to contact more people tomorrow to test the waters on the original problem. Hopefully selecting that fixed it tho!

No. I actually thought they HAD to be User Specific. In fact, I wanted the Users to have their answer on their own row. They ended up showing up at the top of the table while the info was listed down lower.

They have to write in the address which is not ideal. I tried the Special Value email button but I didn’t understand how it worked. It didn’t even show up on the screen. How would I use that?

Yeah, that’s because the form screen will be attached to the first row in the sheet, and any user specific values will be written to that row. But when the form is submitted and a new row is created, it’s added at the bottom. So you’ll probably want to change those.

Yeah, that’s definitely not ideal.
Special Value email is the correct way to do this. It won’t show up on the screen, as there is no user input required. It just sets the column with the users email address when the form is submitted.

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WHOA! I had two workarounds for that which were both problematic. Thanks for the know how.

I will go back and change the columns so they are not specific to users. Hopefully that will change the layout on the sheet.

Thanks for all your help! Definitely moved me forward in the process.

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