Hello. I’m a relatively new Nextcloud user using managed Nextcloud, and I’ve been enjoying the experience so far. I manage a list of all available plans to collect in a game I play. I currently do this by having two sets of documents that I regularly update, one private set that is used by me personally, and one shared set other players can download and use. They’re regular docx documents with tables where you can add your game character names and add checkmarks when you’ve collected a plan.
These documents look pretty neat and tidy, but it’s far from convenient. Every time I make an edit, which is relatively often because it’s a live service game, I have to do it in both of the sets and others have to re-download the new editions every time. The checkmark system I currently use could work more smoothly too. I know others use spreadsheets for things like this, but to be honest, I don’t really like how they look or to work with spreadsheets, and they never seem to work properly on mobile, which is what I use to check off things I collect most of the time.
Therefore I’m looking for a more convenient way to handle this, and because I like Nextcloud and it has so many different apps and features, I’m hoping I can incorporate it into this project because of the collab features with the different apps, but because I’m new to this, I have no idea what apps I should be looking at for something like this.
What I hope to accomplish here is to have some kind of app that functions as an interactive table similar to the document, where people could enter their character names and use checkboxes or something similar to mark their progress, and that can save the data for each individual user. I also need to be able to edit it on a regular basis. If it would be hard to do on a large scale, I would at least want something like this that me and my sister can use. I’ve been looking at Forms, but it doesn’t seem I could freely edit them at any time. I’ve also looked at Tables, but I can’t seem to get it to work quite the way I want to or make it look like it does in the previews, and I can’t seem to find a proper user guide for it.
I’m mostly trying to experiment with the Tables app right now, because it seems to have the potential to do this, but I can’t seem to find a guide anywhere with explanations of how anything works or how to best use this app.
I wanted first to use the rich text option to do headings and sub headings, but I always end up with empty space around my text, which can be removed above my text, but not below it because the empty space below has a prompt for me to add more text that I can’t seem to remove.
They seem to have checkboxes in the previews I’ve seen of the app, instead of a yes/no toggle slider, but I can’t seem to find an option to use checkboxes. I also wonder if I can have different type of columns in one table vertically in addition to horizontally, in case I don’t want any tick boxes on a certain row, or have more than one yes/no tick in the same row? I also wonder if I can create new rows where I want them to be or if they always end up below all the other ones? How do I make the progress bar functional, so it goes up when something is checked off as collected? Can I do that?
I poked around and tried to go about it totally differently than my old table documents, and not have one table for all melee weapons, for example. I made a one table each for a couple of weapons, and put the characters in the rows and the plans in the columns instead of the opposite. It kind of works, but then I can’t add a cell with extra info for an individual weapon mod, or use the search properly.
I also don’t know what happens if a user/someone with the link marks that they have collected one of the plans? Will that be changed for everyone or just that person? I can’t find any guides online with information about this or how to control it. I actually can’t find any in depths guides at all.
It would be an interesting alternative if I could use the Forms app for something like this, because it has the perfect format. It’s just that I need a feature where the data can be saved and viewed at any time by the submitters, that me and the submitters can edit it at any time, and that the data will stay if I make any edits.
I should also add that I’m not in a situation where it would be economically feasible for me to build a full website for this. I do it all for free. I needed a complete list for myself, because no other lists are up to date, and decided I might as well share it too.
If you got any tips on what app(s) would be the best to use for this, any tips on how to use them, or point me in the direction of any guides that explain how to use these apps, I would be super grateful.
Thank you.
Anna