How to update user emails in the app

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1

Hello,

I have an app, and I would like a couple users to be able to edit the user table emails directly in the app. I read in another form that not being able to edit user emails from the app is intended behavior, but is there a reccomended method to do this from a data table in the app if I need to?

Thanks in advance.

2

There is a lot of things to consider when changing a user’s email.

  • Glide also keeps track of that email internally.
  • Any other tables that have that email would need to be manually changed.
  • If you utilize User Specific columns, and your users have data in those columns, you could potentially lose that user specific data.
  • A user would have to sign in again as a brand new user.

The problem is that, not only do you have to change the email in all of your tables that contain that email, but that email would also have to change internally in the Glide system. We don’t have any mechanism to see or change that internal data, so I think that’s why it’s so difficult to allow a user to change their email address on their own. The only option we have with internal data is to delete it manually through the builder. Delete User Data | Glide Docs

If user specific columns are not a concern, then I think your best bet would be to utilize a third part service and/or the Glide API to search for and make updates to any rows that would require an email change. Like I said, you would also need the user to sign out (if it’s a public app) and sign in with the new email. If it’s a private app, they would be automatically signed out because their old email would be removed from the whitelist.

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3

Yes, my app is fairly simple so I’m not very concerened. I just want to be able to have the user table editable directly from the app when I have set a “Visibility” column to a specific value so that folks can quickly just go into an “admin” tab and add a row and user.

Are you aware of any third party services? I’m not sure I am knowlegable enough to do anything with the API.

4

You can make The API calls directly from the Glide app using the Call API action. Otherwise you could use Make or Zapier or Google App Scripts.

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5

Request

It would be nice if Glide:

  • Would mention this limitation in the documentation/Builder.
  • Create instructions or features/toggles in cases emails do need to be changed via the UI. Without users needing to find the community for a fairly basic feature like changing user emails.
  • When creating a new app: Doesn’t create an edit screen for the user tables where email can be changed. This gives the impersonation that this is possible, while it is not.

Another way to solve

Btw: It looks like there is another way to change the email of user tables: Create another app, where you connect the user table, and you create UI in that app, where you can change the email.

Technical Debt problem

It could be the case emails of existing users need to be changed, for example because: New email, an outage of a provider, email(s) getting hacked, domain transfer, etc. I think a lot of apps are out there that are build with the idea that you can change email of users via UI, so no Call API workflow build in. If emails do need to change, as of now users need to have access to the data editor to change emails, which a lot of companies would not want users to poke in. I think this leaves a technical debt not experienced until these problems occur, I believe it would be nicer to prevent problems and misunderstanding. (Side question: how is this done in templates & app marketplace? Because they have same issue I presume)