Friday, April 16, 2021

AppSheet Automation now Available to Everyone

The pandemic and the need to work remotely has forced a lot of companies to automate more of the tasks that were being done manually. And the need to develop apps to create those automations has convinced more and more no-code platforms to add the ability to build those automated workflows. The latest to join the trend is AppSheet, which just made their enterprise level automation product available to all users.

Why should you care about all this? A recent survey by McKinsey determined that at least a third of business activities could be automated in about 60% of occupations. Automating those processes produces a clearly defined set of steps to accomplish the tasks involved, clarifies who is responsible for carrying out the tasks in each step of the process, and provides for automatic notifications or 3rd party requests to be sent at any stage in the workflow. That in turn produces a leaner, faster, more manageable way to carry out the various processes like payroll, accounts payable, inventory control and marketing that every organization has to deal with.

So, how do you use AppSheet Automation to actually create automated workflows? The concept is pretty straight forward. First you configure a "bot" that connects events with an associated process. For example, if someone marks a task in the process as completed, the bot can change the status of that process and send an email to a manager notifying them of the change. When you select to create a bot AppSheet will offer you a choice of "pre-defined" bots (based on your app) that are designed to carry out specific types of processes. You can either choose one of these "pre-built" bots or select to create a custom bot.

If you choose to create a new bot, then you begin creating the workflow for that bot by choosing an event (such as inputting a start date for a job), then adding a step that includes the tasks that need to be carried out once a start date is entered. The step may include branching conditions (such as whether or not the job has a high priority) along with the tasks involved in completing that step (such as sending an email to the person responsible for completing the job).

Once you've added the step(s) necessary to complete the workflow, that process will run automatically whenever the event you selected takes place. Following the same procedure you can create as many automated workflows for your app as necessary.

Note: The system allows you to create four types of task:

    • Sending notifications such as texts or emails.
    • Making a data change such as adding, modifying or deleting a record.
    • Using a webhook to connect to an outside third party service.
    • Creating a template-based Google Docs file.


No comments:

Post a Comment