Events: The Essentials

Manage an event in a bot as described in the following sections:

• What is an event?
• Externally triggered events
• Add an event to a bot
• Configure an app event
• Configure an AppSheet database event
• Configure a scheduled event
• Configure a Chat event
• Configure a Forms event
• Configure a Gmail event (beta)
• Copy an existing event
• View events
• Edit an event
• Delete an event
• Example: Trigger a schedule event on a specific date

What is an event?

An event defines the activity or schedule that triggers a process. You can configure the types of events summarized in the following table.

Externally triggered events

Most events are triggered by some change in the app data. For example, the Status column in an Orders table is changed to Complete .

Some events are triggered by an activity that occurs external to the app, and don't rely on an AppSheet table from a predefined data source to trigger a process. For example, a Gmail event (beta) that triggers a process when a label is added or removed from an email message. 

Externally triggered events:

• Only appear in the Automation tab of the editor
• Don't appear as tables in the Data tab
  Note: When you add an externally triggered event to an automation, a data source is added to your account which can be used in your automations, but no table is added to your app.
• Don't require system views, actions, and so on
• Don't support AI tasks or data actions (such as delete row, set row values, and so on) that require access to data in a table

For Gmail events, you can access and save email content to an existing table in your app, as described in Build an automation using Gmail .

For data change events that are triggered externally in Sheets or Salesforce data sources, external configuration is necessary. See  Sheets and Salesforce , respectively.

Add an event to a bot

To add an event to a bot:

1. Add a bot .

2. In the center panel, click Configure event.
   
   

3. In the Event namefield, enter a name for the event.

4. Do one of the following:

   • To reuse an existing event , select an event under From this App.
     For more information, see Reuse automation components.
   • To create a new event, do one of the following:
     • Click Create a new event .
     • Select an event from the list of  Suggestions.
       AppSheet Automation is an intent-aware platform. The platform understands user intent and recommends configuration options that align with what you are trying to achieve. For example, selecting the following suggestion would configure a process and Send an email task for you:
       When Available record is updated, send an email
5. Select and configure one of the following event sources:
   • App event
   • AppSheet database event
   • Scheduled event
   • Google Chat event
   • Google Forms event
   • Gmail event  (beta)

6. Save the app.

Configure an app event

To add an app event, configure the following settings:

Setting

Description

Event name

Name of the event.

Event source

Select App .

Data change type

Select the data change types made through the app that trigger the event. Select one or more of the following options: Adds, Deletes, Updates.

Table

Select the table whose data changes trigger the event.

To view or edit the structure of the selected table, position your cursor in the field and click . See Tables: The Essentials for more information.

Condition

Condition to check before triggering the event.

Bypass Security Filters?

Toggle to indicates whether to execute as though there are no security filters on the data sources. This setting allows automated tasks (that run as the app owner ID) to continue working. It is useful for generating reports or performing other tasks that require more information.

Event icon

Expand the Displaysection and select an icon for the event.

Descriptive comment

Expand the Documentationsection and enter a comment that describes the purpose of the event.

Linking

Enable or disable reuse of this component by expanding the Linking panel and toggling the Linking setting. See Reuse automation components .

The following shows an example of an App change event that is triggered by any change (add, delete, or update) to the Inventory table.

Configure an AppSheet database event

Before you can add an AppSheet database event, you must:

1. Create an AppSheet database. See Create and copy databases .
2. Add the AppSheet database to your app by creating an app from the AppSheet database or adding the AppSheet database to an existing app . In each case, select  AppSheet databases as the data source and then navigate to the database.

Add an event to a bot , and configure the settings for an AppSheet database event, as follows:

Setting

Description

Event name

Name of the event.

Event source

Select AppSheet database .

Table

Select the table whose data changes trigger the event.

To view or edit the structure of the selected table, position your cursor in the field and click . See Tables: The Essentials for more information.

Data change type

Select the data change types made to the AppSheet database that trigger the event. Select one or more of the following options: Adds, Deletes, Updates.

Columns to watch for updates

Note: This field is displayed only when Updatesis selected for Data change type.

Columns from the selected table whose data updates trigger the event. Open the drop-down and select one or more columns. 

For example:

Make sure you select only those columns that you want to trigger the event. For example, you might want to be notified when the status or due date is changed, but not for other changes. In this example, you'd select only the Status and Due Date columns, but not the other column to avoid excessive or unnecessary notifications.

Condition

Condition that must be true to trigger the event.

Note: To trigger an event based on the time that any data is updated in a row of the AppSheet database, do one of the following:

• Select all columns in the Column to watch for updates field.
• Add a column of type  Update row timestamp  to track updates made to any row. For more information, see Track changes made through an AppSheet database or the app .

Event icon

Expand the Displaysection and select an icon for the event.

Descriptive comment

Expand the Documentationsection and enter a comment that describes the purpose of the event.

Linking

Enable or disable reuse of this component by expanding the Linking panel and toggling the Linking setting. See Reuse automation components .

Configure a scheduled event

Add an event to a bot , and configure the settings for a scheduled event, as follows

Setting

Description

Event name

Name of the event.

Event source

Select Scheduled .

Schedule

Set the schedule and time for the event.

Time zone

Set the time zone for the schedule event.

For Each Row In Table

Flag that specifies whether to operate on each row in the specified table.

Turn on For Each Row In Table  if you want to run a process for each row of data in the table. When turned on, the option to specify a filter condition appears. 

Turn off  For Each Row In Table  if your process doesn't rely on data in a table. When turned off, you can select any event except Run a data action as a valid step type in the process.

Only turn off this setting if your process doesn’t rely on data in any table.

Table

Notes:

• This field only displays if For Each Row In Table is enabled.
• If you have  partitioned the data , only one partition will be evaluated, based on the Filter Condition.

Table referenced by the event. Select an existing table in the list.

Click View definition to view the structure of the selected table. See Tables: The Essentials for more information about adding tables.

Filter Condition

Note: This field only displays if For Each Row In Table is enabled.

Filter condition to use to identify which rows in table are impacted.

Condition

Condition that must be true to trigger the event.

Bypass Security Filters?

Toggle to indicates whether to execute as though there are no security filters on the data sources.

Event icon

Expand the Displaysection and select an icon for the event.

Descriptive comment

Expand the Documentationsection and enter a comment that describes the purpose of the event.

Linking

Enable or disable reuse of this component by expanding the Linking panel and toggling the Linking setting. See Reuse automation components .

The following shows an example of a Scheduled event that is triggered every day at 12:00 PM UTC.

Configure a Chat event

Add an event to a bot , and configure the settings for a Chat event, as follows

The following shows an example of a Chat event.

Configure a Google Forms event

Actions that are triggered by a Google Forms event can rely only on read-only data.

Before you can add a Google Forms event, you must:

1. Create a form in Google Forms. See How to use Google Forms . 

2. Do one of the following:

   • Create an app from the form
   • Add the form  to an existing app

   In each case, select Google Formsas the data source, navigate to the form, and click Select.

See also Build an automation using Google Forms .

Add an event to a bot , and configure the settings for a Google Forms event, as follows

The following shows an example of a Forms event that is triggered when a Travel Request form is submitted.

Configure a Gmail event (beta)

Gmail events can be triggered when you add or remove a label from an email message in Gmail.

You can create a new label to trigger the Gmail event, as described in Create labels to organize Gmail . Alternatively, you can use one of the default Gmail labels (Inbox, Unread, Starred, and so on). You can apply a label automatically using a filter, as described in Create rules to filter your emails . See also How to support collaborative or delegated email sources .

After the Gmail event is triggered, you can access content in the email message associated with the event using the available message column values. See How to access content in the email messages . All email message content is read-only.

Note: When a Gmail event is triggered for a message on an email thread, the automation is also triggered for each subsequent reply in the thread.

See also:  Build an automation using Gmail

Add an event to a bot , and configure the settings for a Gmail event, as follows:

The following shows an example of a Gmail event that is triggered when the  Urgentlabel is added to or removed from an email message in the user@altostrat.com  Gmail account.

Copy an existing event

When you copy an event, the name of the new event defaults to the name of the current event followed by a unique number (starting with 1 and incrementing), such as My Event 1 .

To copy an existing reusable event:

1. Open the app in the editor.
2. Go to  Automation  > Events .
3. Select the event you want to copy in the Events panel.
4. Select More > Duplicate.

View events

To view an event in a bot, select Automation  > Bots , select the bot in the Bots panel, and click the event in the main panel.

To view all events by table, select Automation  > Events . By default, only reusable (linkable) events are shown. To view all events, turn on Show all automation components, as described in Configure app editor settings .

Edit an event

To edit an event, view the event in the app editor, edit the configuration, and save your changes.

Delete an event

1. Select Automation  > Events .
2. Select the event you want to delete in the Events panel.
3. Select More > Delete.

If you are using the legacy editor

Example: Trigger a schedule event on a specific date

Trigger a schedule event automatically at predetermined dates obtained from the app's data. This can be done using the Condition setting of the scheduled report.

For example, suppose you have a table called Tasks . Each row in this table is a task that you have to perform, and each task has a Date column that stores the date when you have to perform the task. You can set up a scheduled report that will automatically send you an alarm message to remind you of the task at 7:00 am on the day the task is supposed to be carried out.

To do this, in the app editor, configure the schedule event as follows:

Here's how the schedule works. Every day, at 7:00 am, the schedule will go through each task in the Tasks table and check the date of the task. If the date of the task is the current date, the schedule will be triggered, and an alert message will be sent.

Note : This design will not work if you want to trigger reports at specific times (hours and minutes) obtained from the app's data.