Data management

One user, one instance

The webified version of your spreadsheet has always the same starting point that it used to have as you upload it. We call it the initial state. Each user is served a pristine version of your calculator with this initial state. This means that every time a user accesses the calculator, they will see the same initial state, without any changes made by other users.

Once an end user, let’s call him Bob, changes an input value, the calculation runs and the formulas and charts are updated. Alice, another end user, opens the online calculator. She doesn’t know Bob is already using it, and she doesn’t see what Bob is doing. They are using two instances of the same application.

To compare with a cloud spreadsheet, like Google Sheets, where Alice and Bob would share the same file, they would see and interact with the same data. However, with Appizy, each user has their own separate instance of the calculator, ensuring that their changes do not affect other users.

Data management

Ephemeral data by default

In the online spreadsheet, the data are ephemeral. It means that once Bob is done, he can close the browser tab and be sure that no one knows what he did. If he reopens the tab or refreshes the tab, he will get a pristine version of the calculator, with all changes lost. This ensures that user data is not stored on the server and is only available for the duration of the session.

Here are some settings to keep a trace of what the user calculated:

Print

Appizy offers a Print setting during conversion. You can choose to print only the visible tab or all the tabs of your application. This allows users to save a physical copy of their calculations, if needed.

Reset

Even with ephemeral data, you might want to enable your user to reset to the initial state without reloading the page. You can activate this setting during conversion to get a “Reset” button in your application toolbar. This button will restore the calculator to its initial state, discarding any changes made by the user.

Save data

This last option will allow your end user to save the current state of the application locally (as a JSON file). This way, the next time they come to your application, they will have the possibility to reload this application to get this state. Our Business Plan Simulator gives you an idea of how this works.

Notes: Appizy uses by default the coordinates of the cells to save data. Meaning that if you change the layout of your application (moving the input cells), this will make the saved data incompatible between the versions. A workaround in this case is to name the input cells. In this case, Appizy will use the name of the cell and not the cell coordinates to reference the data. This solution is more robust between application updates.