App: vork.me
I am working on this app - which means I have some features that are not ready for production, and lots of dummy data. I do have some users that are playing with it, which means it must be mostly working!
In addition, there are features of the app that require some manual intervention - that I used to have to do at a laptop working in the Glide app or in a GSheet directly.
I decided to make an Admin Console for my app to allow me to control things all from my phone.
- In the Users sheet there is a column for ‘Role’ (could have been called anything) - and right now one person has a special value (“SysAdmin” say)
- in the tabs I use visibility = SysAdmin to hide things while I am working on them, same as components on a tab / details page
- It can be annoying only seeing the app as SysAdmin, so I put in a switch in the ‘Edit My Profile’ area - only visible to be by email - which toggles between Admin and User view. This gives me the User experience when I want and need it (for instance, doing a demo for someone)
- some features are only available with that Role - for instance being able to edit ANY document / row anywhere in the app
- My app is based on ‘Cards’ - things to swipe on. The end user can create three types of card only… but the system has 14 types (and counting). It would be annoying to have to go to the backend to create these cards, so I have a toggle in the New Card form which allows me to make any kind of card, and complete card-specific fields (e.g. Video Card needs a ‘video URL’ field)
- Then I have Admin Tabs (will consolidate into a single tab eventually) - which do various things such as ‘Delete’, ‘Reset Swipes, etc’. Many are inline lists with checkboxes, allowing me to manipulate data en masse. ‘Delete’ just sets a flag (for now).
– Reset Swipes is used because I have a check to see if the UserHasSwiped and only display non-swiped cards. Fine for normal people, annoying for testing! So I just manually reset - simple!
- mass card creation - I wanted to upload 20 - 50 ‘Interest’ Cards - one or two words, keywords, that will be used by the backend (eventually) to prioritize future cards based on your swipes (i.e. imagine you swipe on ‘Electric Cars’ as an Interest card, so we add 100000 points to your keyword score, whereas a single swipe with the same term mentioned might only add 100 to the algo). BUT how to put in loads of cards?? I tried in a GSheet but I would have the problem of a) merging in and b) filling in all the columns. Solution? A tab with just interests (editable too), and the ‘create interest card’ only contains the needed fields. Huge time saver
It is very easy to forget about back-end admin of an app, and the data in the app. I was used to having a separate console of some sort, but in reality it is so much easier to have the functionality on a pwd secured device.
This is work-in-progress - but I would love to know what you think. I am also interested in being able to change keyword selections on the fly (i.e. a lookup for choice that can be changed).
I hope this is helpful and gives you ideas 
M
