CHRIS BAILEY: Hello, and welcome to building with AppSheet.
I'm Chris Bailey, a product marketing manager at Google.
And in this video, I'll show you how
you can create your own journaling
app from a Google Sheet.
Before we get started, let's take a look at the app
we'll be building.
You can copy and customize the app
using the link provided in the description below.
First, I can create new entries by selecting
either of these pluses.
Here I can choose a mood, a title
for the entry, activities I've completed that day, notes,
and a photo.
Once I've logged my entry, I can look it up
in either the entries view or the calendar view.
Now let's get started in building our app.
The key to creating a great app is to set up
your data appropriately.
I've already prepared some data for this app
that you can access below.
So feel free to copy that sheet and follow along.
You'll want to have your headers at the top of each column
and your data listed below.
You should also make sure to have a key column so
that each row has a unique value that will
allow AppSheet to identify it.
And it's also helpful to add in a few rows of data
before you create your app, so AppSheet
can tell what kind of data is in each column--
such as dates, time, text, and photos.
And don't worry if you don't have data for every column.
You can always add it later.
For our journal app, I've created three tables--
one that logs our journal entries,
one that lists out the different moods I may be feeling,
and one to list out activities I have
completed throughout the day.
One other tip here--
I really like having images in my app.
To add an image in AppSheet, all you
need is a link to the image, whether that's
stored in drive or out on the web.
Here I've already added some image links
to make it easier for us to build our app.
Now, once we have all our data added,
we can go to tools, AppSheet, create an app,
and AppSheet is going to read our data
and create a prototype of our app.
All right, we've now landed in the AppSheet editor,
and we can see a preview of our app here on the right.
The next step is to define how AppSheet should read
and interact with our data.
Let's go to data, tables, and add the other two
tables from our Google Sheet.
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Now let's go to columns, entries.
Here we can see how AppSheet is interpreting
each of the columns in our entries table.
And because we already added some data to that table,
it's reading most of these columns correctly.
For instance, it's marked the key column as key,
it's labeled date as type date, time as time, and so on.
Now let's make some additional manual
edits so our app runs the way we want it to.
For key-- which is the second row here--
let's uncheck show and editable.
And then for initial value, add in this formula--
Unique ID-- so that our app automatically
creates a key whenever we add a new journal entry.
Next, let's edit our mood column.
Instead of scrolling over this time,
let's click on the little pencil on the left.
This column type is set Ref, which
means it's referencing the data we have in the moods table.
That's perfect.
Let's set the input mode to buttons and click done.
Next let's edit activities.
In our journal entries, we'll want
to be able to select more than one activity,
so we are going to choose EnumList as our type, which
stands for enumerated list.
Check allow other values, and auto-complete other values,
based type ref, reference table activities, input mode buttons,
and enter this formula in the data validity section.
This is essentially telling AppSheet
to show the options listed in our activities table
when we make a new journal entry.
And let's go ahead and save it.
Now let's change notes to long text.
Select title as our label, instead of photos.
And on our moods table, unselect label
on our unicode column, then hit Save.
And let's open up a form in our app preview
to see what we've just done.
We can see the emojis from our moods table listed out
as buttons.
And we can select multiple activities, which have both
the image and name on each.
Now for the fun part--
let's create our views.
Go to UX, views, and let's create our first view, which
we'll call entries.
For me, AppSheet has already created a draft of this view,
so I'll just click into it and make the following changes.
For this data, entries, view tape deck, position left,
sort by time, descending, group by date, descending.
Let's keep the main images photo.
Primary header we'll set to title.
Secondary header, activities, summary column mood.
And then in display, for icon let's grab a book icon.
Finally, in behavior, let's select rows
swiped right as edit.
And you can see your changes updated here
in the entries view.
Now let's create a view for new entries
that can be accessed from the bottom menu.
So let's go new view, name it new entry.
For the data entries, view type is form, position center.
For finish view, let's select entries.
And for our display icon, let's type plus, and do that one.
Finally, let's create a calendar view.
We'll select a new view, view type as calendar.
We'll name the view calendar.
Set position to right.
Start date, date.
Start time, time.
End date, date, and time, time.
Description title.
And let's set category as mood.
Make sure the default view is month.
And for display, let's type calendar,
and let's go with this one.
Finally, we have one extra view here, moods--
which I don't really want-- so let's collapse our views,
find the moods view, and delete it.
All right, hit Save.
And now you can see our three views-- entries, new entry,
and calendar-- along the bottom of our app preview.
Now let's adjust the look and feel of our app.
Let's go to UX, brand.
And I'm going to choose blue as my primary color.
I'll show my view name in the header.
And for style, also like the third option.
That's it.
You've created your very own journaling app.
Now, if you download the AppSheet app on your phone
and log in, you should be able to access your app.
From here, feel free to start logging your journal entries,
or you can add more customizations to your app,
such as new charts, additional data,
or you could even set up reminders on your phone
using AppSheet automation.
For more information on Google Cloud, Google Workspace,
and AppSheet, check out these links below.
Thanks for watching and happy app building.
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