Multiple Items - Looping, Global Variable, Many-to-Many Relationships

[Markus_Malessa]

Seeing that there are Questions on about a weekly basis addressing aspects of Appsheet that require implementation of dozens of steps (workarounds) where there realistically should be condensed options available, I thought I would draw attention to three items which I am sure have already been requested many times.

Looping Action:

The ability to repeat a function or process either via an action on a button click ('Save' button) or via automation steps under a bot a set number of times or by looping over an array (list of rows or items). Frankly for/while loops is an integral part of standard programming and it is somewhat maddening that this is still not available within Appsheet. I was able to narrow down a workaround looping action that still requires three separate actions however.

Global Variables:

The ability to store a data row in a variable and pass values from the entire row to other processes or actions. This should be available via automations but also via table row selection or if a table row/card is clicked it should be automatically stored in a selected-row variable. I was rather disappointed when finding out that the 'return value' step option under bots did not provide this type of functionality. The ability to pass on a variable to another process could have actually simplified the workaround looping action from above.

Many-to-Many Relationships:

Commonly when using SQL databases many-to-many relationships are handled via bridge tables, like TableA>TableAB>TableB where TableAB only stores the IDs of TableA and TableB. In Appsheet this is handled by having a form entry in TableAB, with the option of having the form of TableAB be a part of the form for TableA or TableB, but not part of both. Furthermore, when opening a form for TableA and wanting to declare default values for the TableAB form this is not possible under this structure. What the structure should be in this case is that when opening TableA form, there should be a enumlist input for the ability to select the m-2-m relationship in TableB, and upon saving the new entry in TableA the entries for TableAB should automatically occur based on the multiple selections in the enumlist. Based on other low-code/no-code programs I have personally worked with that is how m-2-m relationships were actually set, so from a framework/programming possibility I would hope this should be possible within Appsheet also. To make this successfully work with a workaround, it again requires additional columns and/or workaround looping actions.

Dear Appsheet developer team, please seriously take these improvements under consideration. If you are already working on this, then it would be nice knowing where this falls on the priority and estimated implementation timeframe. I feel like implementing all of these workarounds  adds unnecessary bloat to the application itself and introduces additional processing times for all of these other actions and processes. Thank you reading my rant.