@TomR Also, it has to be considered that Google to Google to Google is going to have some advantages in itself, since it’s all internal to itself, but it’s a cost for third parties to query and sync data with another company like google. Pro memberships help to share that cost and any costs incurred by free users of the glide platform. Pro apps will give you background refresh, where it will force query the sheet for changes every few minutes while the app is in use. Free will only do it when you make a data change within the app. Since you appear to only be using the app to view data and not add or edit it, then it’s up to Google to send updated data when there are changes. Usually only changes directly within the sheet will cause Google to update third parties with the data. Since you use Google forms, it may be an issue to take up with Google as far as how they handle data internally and share it out through the API. Just because something is in the cloud doesn’t mean that it’s just freely available and that there are no rules or costs involved to access it.
As for the swipe thing you refer to, that is purely for us as developers of the app to see any visual design type changes faster in our app. This should have no bearing on the movement of data between glide servers and the app. This is in no way expected or required of users. I force close on my phone to see the layout changes I made seconds earlier in the glide editor. I’m not patient to wait the few minutes for the app to restart with the last design updates. You can think of it like a native app. Users can choose to update…or not update…an app anytime they want from the app store at their own descrection. With a PWA however, design changes shouldn’t take more than an hour to propagate to all users. Force close (swipe) is maybe an absolute last resort here if the design/layout change hasn’t propagated in a reasonable amount of time. Data changes that are made within the app are immediately propagated to glide’s internal data store and to all users within seconds. Usually it’s also synced to the Google sheet within seconds. Any changes made on Google’s side are completely at the descrection of Google to propagate out to all third parties like Glide.
Since Glide provides background refresh in pro accounts, this helps to resolve the issue of Google not sending out data. Again, if you are working on the sheet directly, then you should be seeing updates in the app within a few minutes (even on free apps). If not, then it’s because the data is coming from an outside source to the sheet (yes even including Google forms and importrange formulas), or you are using one of Google sheets known volotile functions. Or quite possibly there may be a bug or a drastic sheet layout change which caused it to become un-syncable without your intervention through the builder.
The internal glide sheets that were mentioned are not going to be as robust as Google or excel. At least not at first release. There is quite a bit you can do within glide now, but it’s inevitable that some things still need to be done in sheets. Hard to say what that will look like in a year. Last year there wasn’t even a glide data editor, so things have evolved quite quickly over the past months. The main advantage of an entirely internal database is that there is zero lag unlike waiting for glide and google to sync their databases. It also cuts down on sync costs because extra steps, data transfer, and overhead are dramatically reduced. Using completely internal glide data may or may not work for you on your case since you are using your sheets outside of glide for other things and aggregating data from other outside sources. It’s not that they are removing an option…just making another one available for those of us that have heavy data entry and data transfer back and forth between glide and google.
On reference to lookups in the sheet, glide is very capable of using relations and lookups to link data together and pull it into other sheets, so I’m not sure where you are having a problem there. Some very very specific functions of vlookup are not available to Glide’s relation/lookup combination, but it is so much easier
to work with. Same with column values in forms to allow data to prefill without user entry. Also the same with dropdowns in the form. The choice component is very capable of this as well as a type of data validation. I’m not sure why you couldn’t use a choice component. I will agree that data validation on text and numeric entry components aren’t the best in glide, but they are working on it. I also hope that you are customizing the components in the glide form and not just relying on the prebuilt (best guess by glide - get you started) form that you are given from the beginning. You may not be able to do everything you want in glide. Google forms is pretty advanced, but it will get you pretty close and you may be surprised how much you can do with a little advice from others. Also, never expect Google sheet specific functions, like validation, to be translated over to a third party like glide. Google is not going to sent out dropdown validation. It sends data. The data that’s on that cell in that column, in that row and sheet at that time. Anything else you will need to do within glide.
Lastly, to address your oil company reference. Yes in fact an oil companies will, do and have shut down a well if the cost to produce the byproducts are not viable. I’ve seen boom and bust in a very short amount of time, and dead wells that are functional, but too costly to run. High prices to consumers and unavoidable demand can cause high cost wells to spew oil like no tomorrow and a surge in well paying jobs. Low prices and low demand will cause those wells to shut down because the cost to value ratio is in the negative and not worth running them when supply can be controlled with overseas sources and reserve supplies. This leads to the loss of those jobs. Also things like windmills and solar are subsidized by the customer. Yes, they are charged more for energy that is essentially cheaper to make. All in all, the economics of cost vs margin and subsidization are very real things in software as well as oil and energy, but none of it is as cut and dried as it may appear on the surface.
Feel free at any time to ask questions if something isn’t working quite right. We are all here to help and have worked through several of these issues ourselves. If it’s not a direct feature, many of us have worked through complex workarounds to get what we need. Or just wait a week and who knows, there will probably be a new feature that makes life that much easier.
