- [Eddie] Hello this is Eddie from AppSheet here
to help you build a timesheet application directly
from your own data sources like Google Sheets or Excel
all without a single line of code.
So to get started let's head over to appsheet.com
and check out our sample apps.
So you can build an app from scratch
or you can use one of our pre-built templates
as a starting point.
So here we can see the timesheet app.
And the app sheet website allows you to play around
with the sample app on your browser.
So we can do so right here.
We'll take a closer look at everything in a second,
but for now let's just go copy and customize.
All right so one thing to note about the app
that I've just created,
I'm signed into my personal eddie@appsheet.com account
which is linked to my Google Drive account.
So this sample app is being auto-populated
in my Google Drive as a Google Sheet.
But if you were to do so likewise in Office365
or some other platform like Smartsheet,
the app would actually have its data automatically
created and inserted through that platform.
So our users most commonly use Excel or Google Sheets
as a starting point but you can also use
other cloud-based spreadsheets or databases
as a starting point.
So let's take a look at the app.
So here we have our starting view of in,
which represents three employees that are currently in
working on the job.
You can also see that we have a form you can fill out,
which tells us the name, what time they come in,
time out, where employees can log their hours.
And we also have a timesheet of employees' working hours
over the past however many days.
So something to note is that appsheet apps
are entirely customizable, which we'll get to in a second.
Based on the different views
and data sources that you're using.
So jumping over to the data tab,
you can see that we have two primary worksheets
that this is based off of.
So if we go here, we go view source,
we can see that all of the data in the app
is just being populated from a simple Google sheet
that has already been created.
So you can see that here we have all the employees
with the employee name, the email, the start date,
hourly wage, and an image for them.
We could easily create other employees.
We could create new column headers
to represent different categories that we care about.
For instance if we cared about job title,
we could add a job title column
and start creating job titles for each person.
(typing)
Over on the timesheet side of things,
we have employees recorded with time in, time outs,
hourly wages, total wages, all that kind of stuff here.
Likewise we could change the first column
to include other data fields
and have as many rows of data as Google Sheet can populate.
Or if the app gets too big,
we could transfer this over to a SQL server
or other database that would allow us to have
an even broader spectrum of data.
So to see how this app is actually structured,
let's hop back over to our data tab.
And we can see here that these are our two data sources
and we can see them over in columns.
So over in columns,
we see that timesheet spreadsheet represented
in a different form,
and you see that each of the columns
is represented by a different type.
So we could change the type to make sure that it lines up
with what we're going for.
So it could be a time, image, email, all that kind of stuff.
So you can see that some of our columns
have a preset formula that it's being used to generate
what it's actually populating.
So that's over in here.
And you can see that some of these formulas
are being set up through different app logic,
and we call these expressions.
And these are largely modeled after common Excel
and Google Sheet formulas.
So if you're handy around a spreadsheet,
then this should come pretty quickly.
And so we can jump over to find the right expressions
that we need and insert them accordingly.
So we're just going to leave these here for now.
And if you're creating a simple timesheet app,
you could just use the ones we have in place.
But if you want to modify
and create your own different fields,
you can feel free to do so over here.
And there's a whole library of resources
to help you learn expressions over at help.appsheet.com
and our community forum.
Over here you can see that we have slices.
So a slice is a subset of the broader data.
So this in slice represents a subset of all the employees
who are currently in right now
because their timesheet is still going.
So all of our data can then be visualized
over in the UX section.
So you can see that here we have our clock in, in,
and log primary views.
We also have a menu view.
A menu view shows up when you click the hamburger menu
and you see that employee shows up right there.
So we can change any of these UX views in a number of ways.
So, for instance, we are currently in the clock in.
And that is a form.
Let's actually shift over to our in,
and right now we see that that is in a deck view.
You know if we had a lot of employees that were in,
maybe we would want that in a table view.
A table view would allow us to consolidate it,
and we could have more rows.
There's gallery views, detail views.
There's also different views, like charts and calendars,
that aren't applicable for what we're doing right now,
but are totally functional.
So we can change how our data shows up.
We can change how the data is sorted.
We could arrange it by hourly wage,
division that they're working in.
We could display it in all different kinds of manners
and have different icons
that represent what we're going for.
So these apps are largely customizable
based on the kind of user experience
that you want to create for your app users.
We can also add custom branding at the top here.
We could create different formatting rules.
For instance, we could say for shifts
that were over eight hours that involved over time,
we could flag it as red.
Let's also jump over to the behavior tab
to see some of stuff that we can do here.
So here we have a clock out tab.
So this clock out functionality would allow us
to obviously clock out
when we want our employees to clock out.
And so you can find that clock out functionality
over in the in view that we have.
You can see right now it's kind of buried.
So we could actually change that appearance,
and let's say that we want to have that
display as an overlay.
So now whenever Brian Sabino is ready to clock out,
he can simply hit clock out and he is now clocked out
and he would no longer be visible as someone who is in.
Along with actions, we also have workflows.
So maybe whoever's the manager on site,
we would want them to be alerted
through a text message or an app notification
whenever an employee clocks in or out.
We could also set up a report here.
So perhaps our accounting bookkeeper
would want to be notified every week or two weeks
on the total hours of every employee.
And we could easily set that up here.
And over in app security we could also
create our own authentication,
using any of these common providers like Google Dropbox,
Office365, Smartsheet, Salesforce, Box.
Here we can specify how we want users to sign in.
There's all sorts of stuff we can do too with a pro plan,
involving things like security filters,
which would allow certain views to be seen by certain people
but not by others.
So once we finish formatting our app,
we can head over to not deployed
and run a deployment check on our app
to make sure everything is good to go.
And it looks like everything is good to go
and so we're gonna go ahead and move this app
to a deployed state.
And so what happens when you move the app
to a deployed state is then you, as the app creator,
will get an email with a link to install this app.
And so from there you can simply go into your email
and install the app onto your phone.
So there you have it.
That in a nutshell is how you create a timesheet app using
AppSheet's platform and a common data source
like Excel or Google Sheets.
So if you wanna get started, again just go ahead
and head over to appsheet.com.
Check out our sample apps.
Search for a timesheet app,
and start copying and playing around and make it your own.