Enhanced dataviz is urgently needed. My clients want me to consider other solutions because they’re not satisfied with the current components. I tried to insert custom CSS but it’s not future proofed. I also thought about adding stuff in an iFrame… frustrating and not sustainable for creating quick duplicates of apps.
1 Like
Agree. I would very much like to see a range of chart types and styling options, beginning with the standard range offered by excel (2D only).
I guess this intercepts with Glide’s target user needs since data visualization is valued by us business users:
Yep !
And if we think about excel it’s absolutely true.
I’ve also in mind new tools directly or indirectly which have this kind of features such as Tableau, Qlik Sense or PowerBI that corporate IT are pushing. 
1 Like
Are you by chance a Tableau expert?!
I would love to know if it’s possible to have Tableau regularly export and refresh a saved data file, eg Excel. In this way I could use it to synch data into a Glide App.
We have a Tableau file at work and we can manually export a CSV file. Right now I have to manually export, the file, then import it manually into Glide. It would be great if I could program the tableau dashboard to refresh an Excel file located on a shared drive every night. Do you happen to know if this is possible?!
I’m using Make.com as a go between. Likely going with Databox for the dashboard, and Glide to do all the stuff Glide is amazing at. I know a bit about Tableau, Domo and some of the other platforms - from what I can see so far, and I’m early in my research, Databox looks quite good (and flexible).
Currently wrestling with whether or not to use a SQL database as a storage repository to have Make push data from Glide into, and for Databox to read … or something else.
Make does a great job of moving / syncing data with Excel or Sheets - depending on your data volume and client requirements … if Excel charts work for them, it’s a relatively easy setup with Glide and Make.
Make also allows for scheduling of webhooks and such to send / receive data … format it and pop it on OneDrive or Google Drive or email it at the frequency you want.
I agree it would be amazing if Glide built this stuff in - but knowing that they can’t be all things, it seems ok to me to use a pure play dashboarding / reporting solution for this stuff.
In the ‘old days’ you’d move your transactional data to an operational data store and cube it for faster processing, and reduced load on the core system. Just feels like an evolution of that paradigm - from really hard and expensive, to easy enough for a simpleton like me to figure out and easy on the wallet.
If it’s of interest - I found a page in Databox help files that basically lays out how to move, sync and schedule the data from Make to Databox step by step: Guide: Using Make (formerly Integromat) with Databox (Third-Party Integration)
There’s content in Make and Glide that detail how to get that connection going … ping me if it’s of interest and I’ll see if I can find them for you.
2 Likes
Nope,
I used it 2 times before leaving the big pharma where I was working. I was on Qliq Sense And then I found it too expensive for my small business. So now I’m trying to propose other solutions to my clients. The problem we had in the business side was the fact that these tools, as corporate solutions, are deployed by our IT colleagues identically for everyone and with features controlled at corporate level.
Considering your problem it would be interesting to see if you can plug an API service based on the trigger you would like (time, reached number). Once you can access it through Make or Zapier ?.
Make sure your IT partner is aware and ok with the policy of your company beforehand because they legitimatelly don’t like when it’s maverick like, without authorization and therefore it becomes shadow IT.
Kind regards
Pat
1 Like
Great idea!
I’m going to explore Databox.
Even if I’d prefer something changing in Glide for the charts…
Kind regards
Pat
I’m definitely with you on the ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if I could do it all in one place’. Personally, I think that’s inevitable over time.
I did an exhaustive search before landing on Glide as my primary platform - and I’m glad I did, it’s amazing and what Glide focuses on is what was most important to me.
But you can see all the players doing bits and pieces already … Make has data stores, so does Zapier. Glide has actions - Make and Zapier have automations … and on and on.
Next 5 years should be really interesting as the feature / function parity starts to take hold … I don’t think this will become a commodity market, but I think the big players will functionally be quite similar.
The winner, I think, will be the one with the best user experience and the lowest barrier to adoption (aka, truly no code).
I’m betting on Glide - I think they’ve really figured it out. But for now, and until all the functionality I want is available, I’ll use others. For now 
2 Likes
I find the built in math to the glide tables to be very powerful, and even though glide isn’t the most diverse when it comes to charts etc it gets the point across. If you want a really nice “cheap” dashboard, I have used geckoboards in the past and it looks really nice and you can pack it full of comparative features.
If i was to use that again i’d setup a seperate google sheet with all my critical information sync’d using make.com from my glide table just pushing in the data as raw numbers but letting glide do the heavy lifting with math etc. there are work arounds that i’m using to make this happen currently for limited information. You do need to make sure your sending out single values, not computed values from the glide table.
Thanks Myles,
That’s great info – I’ll take a look at geckoboards.
I agree on the math. I do some really complex calculations in there. For me, and our use case, Make and Databox are more for things like executive dashboards with visual summaries across key metrics.
Big Tables is already a huge step in the right direction for us to be able to use Glide as an even more key part of our total architecture. SQL connectivity is also great, but we don’t have a SQL infrastructure and I’d prefer not to build one if we don’t have to. Big Tables should do the vast majority of what we need storage wise, and a lot of the calcs / rollups.
Make moves it out for us – either on demand, or on a schedule, and databox whips into a shape / form execs (who all seem to have ADHD these days, me included) can consume.
Your workarounds sound great – and it’s stuff I’ll definitely start looking into. Thanks for the suggestions! Hopefully the info above helps round out why we make the decisions we did.
1 Like