Emulating a multi user accessed spreadsheet on Appian using editbale inline grid. (Question) (Best Practice)

Someone is asking me to create the functionality of a shared excel spreadsheet on Appian. They want multiple business users to be able to log in and access this spreadsheet and make modifications to it so that others can see it. (Kinda like Google Docs)

 

My question is, what would be the best way to do this?

 

I created a CDT with all the columns that they want on the spreadsheet.

I created an interface with an editable inline grid where you can add and remove rows.

Now how can I make it so everytime they add/delete or modify data that it reflects that in the database so that next time they come back, it reflects what they did. 

Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks,

Note:I tried to create a process model that passes in a CDT multiple array and the interface can add or delete or modify to that CDT multiple array and then write back to the database, but it appears that when adding a new row in the editable inline grid, it doesn't generate an id field (rpimary key) which I think may be causing a problem. It works for modifying data though, and I haven't tried deleting yet.

Any thoughts?

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  • Hi Jhonn1,

    1. but it appears that when adding a new row in the editable inline grid, it doesn't generate an id field (rpimary key) which I think may be causing a problem. --- Are you using a sequence generator for generating primary key?I think you might need to use so that when new rows are added the primary key will be generated by Default.
    2. It works for modifying data though, and I haven't tried deleting yet.-- You can try delete from data store entity sail function(Deleting from DB is not a good practice instead its better to keep track of active and inactive records.

    I have a question. How would you handle the parallel edits?. Suppose two business users are editing the same data at the same time?
    if there is a rare case but still needs to be considered to implement this as well else data will be scrambled.

    Just to add my thoughts,

    As you aware that Editable grid will not have pagination what happens if the rows are getting increased 100+?
    How many columns does the editable fields should display?

    So in this case the user might experience noticeable slowness when no or rows are getting increased.

  • Co-authoring like Office Online or Google Doc requires specific software and UI components. The Appian UI does not offer these capabilities. Instead of trying to implement this in Appian, consider integrating with with Office Online/Sharepoint or Google Doc to edit the documents.

    These cloud-hosted systems offer many WS APIs that can be used to upload/download documents and edit them.