Help with support

[Tragertt]

So this problem has been going on for 4 weeks now with no solution from the support team through the chat. I have been told over and over again that “due to the complex nature of this problem please allow us time.” Its been 4 weeks and still my app has inconsistent errors mostly consisting of “Stop executing after step Send Email, because the request took too long to process”. I have reached out to support 6 or 7 times and nothing has improved. This is a problem on appsheets side and not the app. I have made a copy of the app, deployed it and sent 124 tests and everything went perfect. Not one error. This all started happening with the “Perimeter error” 4 weeks ago. The app has been inconsistent ever since. Here is a timeline of my support contact

Sept 22nd - Initial chat with support, recommend limiting virtual columns - Still a problem. Virtual Columns removed

Sept 23rd - Chat with support - recommend limiting security filters. only 1 security filter

Sept 26th - Chat with support - a specialist is working on the problem, give them time

Sept 27th - Appsheet requests permission to access the app - no response as to resolution

Oct 2nd - Chat with Appsheet asking to talk to specialist, say its impossible but they are working on it

Oct 5th - Chat with support, no resolution but they are working on it, give them more time

Oct 9th - Sent email on case asking for status, response came 4 days later saying they need more time

Oct 12th - Chat with support, no resolution and check app version, they need more time

Oct 13th - Appsheet requests access to app - no resolution email sent with no response

Oct 19th - Sent email asking for status update and still no resolution and stating they need more time and be patient.

Does anyone have a contact with better than basic support for this problem? 4 weeks is an absurdly long time to wait for a resolution and all I am getting from support is please wait. If there had been any indication as to what is going on then I would be fine but no communication seems like the support company is hoping it will resolve itself. I have serious doubt as to the effectiveness of the support company.

[AleksiAlkio]

May I ask what is your Bot doing? It sounds it’s doing something like row by row and it takes more than the limit 2 minutes (5 minutes with schedued Bot) or it has complex calculations. Have you tried to filter most of the rows away with the security filter? If yes, what is the resut then?

[Tragertt]

The failed bots are random, one time its sending an email another time its sending a text and an email, another time its sending a chat message and another time it is updating an event from open to active. The log looks like this

The code hasnt changed and this is still happening. That one was from sending a text only. This one is sending an email only

Here is the exact same code but only the department name is changed

If I make a copy of the app and use that, the log looks like this with the exact same code

Appsheet basic support is not able to find and fix the problem after 4 weeks. I am hoping on here someone knows someone I can talk to about this

[AleksiAlkio]

Is it just a data change Bot triggered from one row?

[Tragertt]

Yes, if status = “open” run a data action to change it to “Active”

[AleksiAlkio]

That sounds weird

[Tragertt]

How do you mean?

[AleksiAlkio]

If it’s just a data change and it’s triggered only by one row, it should not go over the timeout limit unless it has some very complex formulas doing something.

[Tragertt]

its a bot that triggers when added and only if status = “open”. Data change to “Active”. The other bots that randomly fail are fine in the copy

[Aurelien]

@Roderick you may be able to escalate this?

[devingu]

Hey everyone, sharing some insights here: we’ve escalated this to the Eng team and we have been working on it. However, due to the inconsistent nature of the issue, It’s quite hard for us to pin point where exactly the issue is (because it’s not producible from our end). Really appreciate your patience while we are digging deeper into it!

[racingmat]

Hi,

exctaly same problem.
Bot sometime work good sometime happend this problem of timeout. i have write to the support for 1 month and never solve nothing. I don’t know how to fix this problem…

[Tragertt]

So the support company from India or Pakistan or wherever is not doing anything to help with this. They didn’t do anything to try and fix the problem and after 2 weeks of not working on the problem I get an email stating that since I have not said anything the problem must be fixed. There were no issues with the original app because I had to abandon it since it was unreliable. I have been in technology support for 20 years now and have dealt with a lot of tech support and the company that Google has decided to support Appsheet is by far the worst I’ve ever seen. In talking to support on chat there was no way to talk to a supervisor or an engineer or anyone above them, the only thing they ever told me was to be patient. Their English was very wrong and they couldn’t understand what I was saying and all their fixes didn’t do anything. In the beginning of Appsheet I would chat with someone directly from Google and they would know what they are doing and help me right away, this new support company simply said “be patient” while weeks went by with no answer. It seems they stuck their head in the ground and hoped it went away because it would be weeks for a response and they would just ask “is it still doing it?”. We are a large organization and I am now in contact with a vice president so hopefully we can get a solution to the horrible customer service that has been provided. Without any help with the support company I think I have it figured out. During the add record step it calculates all the VC and if bots should be triggered. The more VC and the more bots the longer the calculation takes. I think with the amount of bots I have the 2 minutes are expiring. I will work on optimizing the code.