I’ve run into an issue a couple of times that ends up costing a lot of time to fix. Changing the tab style completely removes all the components associated with that tab. This is not a mistake I make myself as I’m aware of the danger, but how can I prevent others from accidentally touching the button?
There are a number of schools using their own version of my app and each school has an admin in charge of managing the back end (basic stuff like adding students, resetting points etc). I provide them with instructions covering all the dos and don’t within the builder, and have set up the app so that visits to the builder are rarely needed. However, on three occasions, the style button must have been tampered with because the main tab has been reset. This is a tab with a lot of components, many of which have multiple actions etc.
Given the sheer calamity that a simple tap of a button can cause, it might warrant a warning message pop up or something similar? I’m faced with at least 2 hours work rebuilding the latest mishap that happened today
Some suggestions: instead of giving them builder access, consider adding an edit screen to do the data modifications they need to make (like resetting points and adding students), and protect those App feature from other users by having a “Teacher” or “Admin” role that has access to those addition edit screens.
It’s been requested for years. And it’s certainty that 100% of anyone who has used Glide has not only experienced this before, but has also been bitten by this in a painful way.
Yes nearly all the maintenance of the app can be done through the app itself and there’s usually only one person within a school who has access anyway. However, resetting points requires the removal of thousands of rows, which can only be done via the data table. In addition, part of the selling point that brings schools onboard is the ability to customise the app to suit their needs and preferences (e.g colour scheme).
I think a warning message would be fairly easy for Glide to implement. Even better would be the ability to copy and paste components in from other apps, that way I can just rebuild easily from the master app. The ability to have some sort of ‘restore to an earlier version’ system would be great. But I guess if those things were possible they’d already have been implemented.
You can do this. Right-click, copy all, paste. Either in the same app or another app in the same team.
There is no versioning feature as of yet, but you can duplicate an app as a backup. You can add a date and time in the name of the duplicate to indicate different versions.
They are possible but it’s a question of priority. Glide has a roadmap of features to develop and these features are prioritized. By definition, some have higher priority than others. A style change warning and app versioning haven’t made it to development yet
Holy moly I had no idea you could do this! I must have tried in the past across different teams and thought it applied to all situations. Have used the copy all feature within the same app plenty of times. Thanks heaps
Also remember that if you do change the style of a tab inadvertently and catch it right away, bottom left of the viewer you can revert changes.
It’s call “Undo”.
I don’t know how many times into the past you can revert and I’m pretty certain the revert feature reboots when you leave the builder to the dashboard, but if you catch your style change immediately, you’re in luck and you can cancel your mistake.
Maybe you could try duplicating that tab and hiding the duplicated version. At a glance, it seems that changes made to the tab don’t affect its instance.
yes, in an instructional video I made I ‘accidentally’ change the style and then undo it to show how it can be done. I’m guessing they either forgot or didn’t even notice. I think if you change the style, enter the data tables and then go back, you lose the ability to undo the mistake
In theory you could duplicate a tab, rename it to “BACKUP tab name” and hide it. But in practice who would do that? You would end up have a messy list of tabs. And it’s difficult to imagine the maintenance of these backup tabs.
I think in practice it’s easier to back up an entire app, or of course to have a warning message in the first place since a misclick can have a huge negative impact. Just like deletion is usually accompanied by a confirmation prompt, so could this style change (since it’s not entirely different to a deletion).
I partly blame the naming of the area - ‘Style’ is just so damn tempting for someone who doesn’t know Glide and has been told that the app can be customised. “Oooh, style, let’s see what that does”…
You can delete multiple rows through a relation or query. If you set up a simple query, I think you could create a simple button somewhere to delete your rows, rather than have to go through the data editor. Not sure how reliable it is for thousands of rows, but it’s worth a shot.
I’ve thought about that, will look into it again. Can be upwards of 20000 rows at times. For the most part, deleting them manually is pretty straightforward though
It is not necessary to change the name of the tab. Duplicating the tab or duplicating the app is an option that depends on the editor. Duplicating the tab prioritizes anticipating any accidental changes that cannot be undone without having to revert to an earlier version, especially after many changes have already been made. You can anticipate such issues using either of these two methods.
I’m going to do this. Won’t affect the users as they’ll never see it and it’d be the fastest way to get the app back up and running. It’s only one tab I’ll need it for as the rest are fairly basic.
