Does anyone know exactly how often Glidapps updates on it’s own with the PRO accounts. I honestly need mine to update every minute if not more frequently and it seems like it does it every 5 to 10 minutes unless we manually enter in data. I’m looking for an exact number if possible. I know I can run a script timer that forces it to update every 30 seconds but I was hoping to not have to do this.
Can you tell us why you need updates every minute? Maybe there’s something we can build into Glide to make this more efficient, like time-based calculations. Reloading your sheet is very expensive for us.
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Ah. Interesting. I suppose this somewhat answers my question from the Templates thread. Do you not want an ecosystem that establishes Sheets as the backbone of app calculations? Are you expecting Glide will one day be able to match Sheets with its own formulas and calculations? If so, are we months from that or years, you think?
If I could do even 50% of the kind of the calculations I get in sheets with Glide’s builder, I’d be willing to pay more for Pro, and I’d happily give up sheets.
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You will be able to build apps without a Google Sheet within a year.
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With the kind of robust calculations and formulas you get in Sheets?
The data editor will get more powerful. I am not sure what “robust” would mean in this context.
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“Robust” in this context means volume and variety of formulas. Data editor currently provides a tiny fraction of the number of types of calculations that Sheets (any spreadsheet that provides formulas, really) provide. And in aggregate and especially used together, those extra formula-types provide the ability to do a considerable amount more with an app. Is the plan for the Data Editor to become as “powerful” as a spreadsheet in terms of formulas?
In my opinion, if you can expose some sort of a refresh trigger in the UI editor that users have to use judiciously - say only once every 5 minutes. It’s like a weapon that one uses at last resort but have to save till the end.
I have a page X that opens checkout screen that user uses to pay for a service plan Y. On checkout, I do calculations on “App: Sales” insert row trigger which ultimately shows update (that now you’re on plan Y) on page X. But the wait for page X to show the payment update can be very confusing. I have to have a message on page X - after successful checkout please wait a minute or two for payment to post.
Now, if I had something configurable in the UI editor that allowed me to fire a refresh trigger after order has been placed on checkout screen, that will reduce the delay. I hope I am making myself clear. But again since this is very expensive to glide as a platform, say it can be done only once every Z minutes.
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But certainly excited for a more powerful data editor. Any more power is fantastic.
How do you do it with a script timer?
Our goal for Glide is that most software on Earth is created with Glide by 2030. So, yes, we plan to add many robust calculation abilities.
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So if you keep your google sheet that is linked to your app closed it will update every minute. You leave it open and it just randomly updates.
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Good to know, thank you.
Yeah, I’ve been racking my brain over this for months. I finally decided to clone the app and try it both ways and well I’ll be damned…
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Interesting AB test. 
So you duplicated the app with a different sheet
A: left the sheet closed
B: left the sheet open
installed the apps anew, launched, made changes in both simultaneously and timed visible changed in the UI?
Yes, duplicated sheet and app. Left one opened and 1 closed. Repeated this over a week span. Same result over and over again. Deleted duplicate which was updating every minute. Applied same theory to app that is in use and exactly the same result. My app now updates every minute. I just have to do maintenance at night.
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I too have a similar issue where the app has to wait for the calculations/scripts to execute based on the App:Sales sheet values and it takes unacceptably too long to consider it industry acceptable.
I’d be interested to know what your script looks like that triggers the Glide update?
@Mark Having access to the App:Sales data within Glide would really help while the power of complex calculations within Glide is built over time.
In my case (as well as many other’s), think of a restaurant table ordering app, I need the app to display the order (on both the user and restaurant apps) effectively immediately after the user has paid for it (every single time).
From a UX perspective the objective is always to complete a workflow with the least amount of user taps/clicks (the use of Forms doesn’t cut-it)
So for me (rightly or wrongly) the use of Glide’s cart feature to add food items to an order makes perfect sense. When the user pays, a script runs on the App:Sales sheet to group the items into their unique order, then from the User sheet search and copy the user’s dining preferences (table number etc) then display this back under the user ‘Past Orders’ list and the Restaurant’s ‘Pending’ orders for the order to be processed.
All this needs to essentially happen instantly so the user sees the order and more importantly the Restaurant sees all new incoming orders as soon as they are submitted so they can process it.
Having a near-instant refresh time would be awesome and would certainly feel more of a native-like experience.
Or at least give us access to the App:Sales sheet within Glide
Or at least this. Refresh internally after payment has been made through Stripe. So user sees “order has been placed”. Click Ok or back to land on parent screen. Glide internally fires refresh.