I read @ianhyzy’s post about how you can use Glide to make editing transactions in your Tiller sheets on mobile really nice and easy:
Ian provided some general information here, but I thought I’d share my experience.
Overall, working with Gilde was great. Within 15 minutes, I had my own Tiller Mobile friendly app. But there are some things you should know.
I was able to quickly create a free account at Glide here. With a free account, you can have unlimited apps, but there is some Glide branding. For $19 a month, there is no Glide branding, there are more component options and some other features.
It was helpful to watch the 90 second video on the home page. I also looked around the Introduction to Glide page.
When I felt ready to create my own app, I selected the + New app box. It presented me with a list of my Google Sheets. I then selected my main Tiller spreadsheet.
The first thing you should do is set the Privacy setting. Click the Settings link on the left then the Privacy tab on the right. Privacy options include Public, Public with email, Password and Email whitelist. I chose Password. There’s more info in the documentation here about what each one does.
My next step was to look at the Tabs settings, clicking on Tabs on the left. Glide works best on sheets when Row 1 contains Column Headers and the rest of the rows have column data. So, the Transactions sheet and the Categories sheet worked well. But other sheets, like Insights, Monthly Budget and many others don’t work.
You can decide which sheets to display in the Tabs sections. If you put a sheet under Tabs on the right side, it will show up at the bottom of the screen. Other sheets can be put under the Menu section. They show up under the hamburger icon on the upper left corner in the app. Other sheets can be Hidden. You can drag and drop each sheet into the section and order you want.
Once I decided on my Tabs, I got to work on the Layout section. You can choose from 8 different Layout styles. The Calendar option worked great for Transactions. You can also add Features like a search bar or sorting order under the Features tab. The Add tab lets you add data, such as new Transactions.
If you click on a single transaction, you can see options to adjust the Layout and decide whether to allow users to edit or delete data.
I wanted to add the ability to categorize my transactions. When I first looked at the Edit Layout, it let me edit the text in the Category field, but it didn’t give me a dropdown list of all the category choices.
I was able to add this feature by selecting the blue plus sign in the upper right of the Components section on the Edit item page and adding a Choice component. That let me select the Categories sheet as the Option sheet and Category as the Options column. Since the Categories sheet Category column lists all my categories, all those categories became available in the dropdown list in the edit mode.
Once I got the app designed the way I wanted, I went to the Share app link on the left. Using my iPhone’s camera, I aimed it at the QR code on the screen. This opened a link in Safari and let me add the App to my iPhone Home Screen.
There is no SAVE app button. Glide seems to automatically save the settings and any setup you create for the app. If you make changes, you need to download a new version of the app and delete the old one.
As new data comes into your Tiller sheets, that data will automatically be fed into your new Glide Tiller mobile app.
Give it a spin. It turns Tiller into a very useful mobile app. Let us know how it works for you.
