I am trying to build a contact manager app. I have built one in AppSheet that has some functionality I don’t seem to find here in Glide. I am not sure if I am missing something, or if it just doesn’t exist.
One of the things I like about the AppSheet Contact Manager app is that it has a way to keep track of the last time you called someone. That’s a must-have for me. Is there a way to do this in Glide?
Also, what is the deal with the map limit? How do I get this increased? I built a custom map view in Google with no problem. I only have 200 or so contacts. Not sure why I am hitting the ceiling.
The frustrating part I am having with Glide, overall, is the lack of a hard “save” function. Things keep reverting as I mess about. For instance, I am using Inline List to display contacts. The Action is to display the details. But I have no way to change the details card to include the information I want. When I go into Style > Details and customize it, then THAT becomes the default display for my contacts. When I then go back to Style > List, all my changes there (grouping, etc) are gone.
Create a button or clickable text whereupon clicking/tapping this action sets the datetime in your table for that contact.
Create a button or clickable text whereupon clicking/tapping this action sets the dateime in your table for that contact AND then calls the contact.
To do this, create a button, associate an action to your button, and select the following actions:
To set the datetime: “set columns values” + “current date & time”
To call: “dial phone number”
If your call is a Whatsapp call: “open link”
Admittedly in a way you need to build out the double-action of call and set a datetime. It’s pretty neat that the timestamp is taken care of automatically in AppSheet.
In the following screenshot, the “Got in touch” button is redundant since the datetime timestamp could have been included in the two buttons above.
This depends on the plan you are subscribed to. Pricing page. I didn’t look hard but I couldn’t locate the information on the page. If you’re on a free plan, you are probably limited to 10 pins per map (random guess).
By upgrading plans. The plan applies per team, not per app.
When you do anything in Glide, everything basically saves in real time, which is quite nice. You can, however, control auto-publishing in paid plans so you can work on a project without changes constantly being pushed to production (your live project).
Styles
You have 8 styles to choose from. 7 are lists in one form or another. On these list screens, you only have one list to work with and no other components/elements (and you can decide to add a search bar). The only 1 which is not a list is the “Details” style: this style is the most flexible, you can add multiple components, one of which may be an inline list which is the equivalent of the 7 other list styles. Whenever you toggle from one style to another, settings are indeed lost, because you are entirely changing the display of your screen.
Detail screen of a record
When on one of your lists (either one of the 7 styles) or your inline lists on your details style, when you click on a record, the default action is to “Show detail screen” and therefore open the record’s detail screen. Unlike the name might suggest, this screen has nothing to do with the details style above. On the details style, imagine you are locked to an entire table. On the detail screen, in a way you are locked to the data of a single row/record and you use components to display the data from the columns of that record. When you change the components on the detail screen of one record, it automatically changes all the other records/rows of the list. This is quite practical.
I hope this makes sense. Long text explanations sometimes make things seem more complicated than they are. Here, all you have to understand is that your style called Details is actually very different than a record’s detail screen.
I figured out the formatting part for details. I didn’t realize you could modify things like the action text or that you had to click on a list entry to modify it’s details.
The call log is something I will have to look into.
In AppSheet, you make a separate tab in your Google Sheets called “Activity” and then when you make the call, it creates an entry. Then there is a “virtual column” in your contact manager that looks for the timestamp of that user record. If it there is none, for that key, then there is no call record to display in your details. If there is a call record, then it will show you the number of days since that call.
It would be nice if “Map Entries” was something listed under the pricing comparison table. If I can just use the map from the contact street address, then that’s fine. There should be a way to concatenate fields, too. That’s something else in AppSheet, when you make a virtual column. For instance, not everyone has street addresses as a single cell. That’s actually a bad data practice. But there’s no way make the map use “street address” + “city” + “state” + “zip”, which is how most folks would store this information.
One other thing, if I may ask. Is there a way to filter your list and make that a separate view, or does it just take a separate data source? For instance, in my contacts, some are in offices and some are remote workers. I would like to have a way to see all the offices, if I am out driving and wanted to go visit. I made a column called “Location” and would like to be able to filter on it.
You can concatenate columns (across columns) by using the ‘Template’ computed column.
You can concatenate lists (down a column) by using the ‘Joined list’ computed column.
You can split strings of text and turn them into array elements by using the ‘Split text’ computed column.
I’ve never used AppSheet, but it seems that a virtual column in AppSheet might be similar to a computed column in Glide. In Glide, a computed column is a column that takes data from a basic column (dumb static data) and computes it in some way. Same idea as in a Google Sheet: some columns have data in them, and others formulas that compute that data.
