The first thing we do when evaluating a new service is to check out the blog, as we don’t want to invest time and money in a service that isn’t being actively developed or supported. In our experience, a well-maintained service usually goes hand in hand with a well-maintained blog.
By that metric, we have let you down recently. With only one blog entry posted this year, it may seem like Calcapp is dormant.
Thankfully, nothing could be further from the truth — we’re moving full-speed ahead with a new release. While smaller in scope than some of our previous ones, this release is packed with important new features that will enable entirely new kinds of apps.
We’ll keep some of features under wraps for now, but the headline addition is this: you can now set the values of drop-down fields using formulas. That single change unlocks a wealth of possibilities, including:
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Populate drop-downs from data tables. Link drop-down fields directly to a column in a data table — no more copying and pasting values.
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Multi-level drop-downs. Use one drop-down field to determine the values displayed in another.
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Text-driven drop-down filtering. Allow your users to filter a drop-down field using a text field.
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Filter drop-downs with switch fields. Use switch fields to refine the available drop-down values.
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Filter drop-downs using dates. Filter drop-down values based on start and end dates selected in date and time fields.
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Filter drop-downs using user roles. Private apps require users to sign in. If a role is assigned to a user, you can use that role to filter what’s shown in a drop-down.
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Custom sort order. For drop-downs with many values, order matters. Customize the sort order to make options easier to scan.
This new feature places significant demands on our formula engine. In fact, while writing one of the upcoming blog posts about these features, we uncovered several issues.
The culprits? Named values, which we’ve come to rely on heavily when building apps. Under stress, they didn’t always behave correctly — surfacing issues similar to the ones we identified and fixed last year. We’ve spent the past few months diving deep into these problems, and we’re now nearing the finish line.
Since our last major release nearly two years ago, most of our time has actually gone into a far-reaching project to modernize Calcapp and prepare it for the future. Specifically, we’re working to make it easy to use our formula engine in new contexts.
That work will have exciting implications down the line—we look forward to sharing more when it’s ready.
In the meantime, we’re thrilled about our upcoming release, which should be ready in the coming months.