Introducing Rail Sign for Rail Shine
How we built Rail Sign—an AppSheet-based inspection app for Rail Shine—to capture job data, automate PDF reports, and file everything cleanly in Drive. No Zapier. No upgrades. Just one smart solution that does the job right.
Introducing Rail Sign (formerly ShineCheck) for Rail Shine
In the world of rail maintenance, keeping a clear record of work is just as important as the work itself. What started out as "ShineCheck" evolved—after a bit of a naming epiphany—into what we now call Rail Sign, an app we built to streamline how Rail Shine’s operators document completed jobs on each asset. This post is a candid look at how we approached the problem—false starts, frustrations, breakthroughs and all—much like a dev diary from the trenches.
The Problem: Documenting Work Done (Without the Hassle)
Rail Shine’s field operators needed a straightforward way to record each job they finished on a given asset. That sounds simple, but the requirements quickly piled up:
Attach photos of the completed work (often multiple photos per job).
Capture the customer’s signature as proof of completion.
Automatically generate a PDF summary of the job’s details (including those photos and signature).
Email that PDF report to the customer with their boss CC’d.
Organise everything in Google Drive: all photos and the PDF needed to live in a folder named after the specific asset and job number.
In short, we needed to go from an operator finishing a job to a polished PDF report in a customer's inbox, and all files archived in a structured way—without manual effort.
Early Attempts: Over-Engineering an Automation Rube Goldberg
I started where any reasonable person might—AppSheet for form logic and Google Sheets as the backend. But to automate the rest, I assumed we’d need a Google Workspace upgrade at £20 per user/month just to send emails outside our domain.
To avoid that cost, I duct-taped a system using Zapier and Make. AppSheet fed form data into Google Sheets. Zapier would pick that up to create and email a PDF, and Make would try to relocate the images into a Shared Drive folder. In theory, elegant. In reality, an automated disaster.
It quickly got out of hand. I had:
Zaps triggering Makes.
Makes looping Drive API calls.
Credentials and webhooks like spaghetti in a drawer.
Photos would go somewhere in Drive—but rarely where I actually wanted them. And email? Half the time it failed silently.
One low point was looping multiple image uploads in Zapier: I built five identical steps in case the operator added five photos. If they only added three? The rest just failed. It worked—badly.
Trial and Error: Dead Ends That Taught Me Something
1. Zapier Loop Hack
Chaining five image steps in Zapier got the job done, but it was brittle and ugly. If the job needed six photos (don’t even ask about seven!), I'd have to rebuild the whole chain and potentially split the automation due to step limits. It was a “win” I immediately regretted.
2. The Glide Detour
Thinking AppSheet might be the wrong horse, I rebuilt the app in Glide over a weekend. The UI looked great and PDF generation was simpler—but Glide’s Drive control and automation logic were too limited. We bailed.
These misfires weren’t wasted: they gave me a clear view of what we needed—and just how far I’d been trying to over-solve a problem that might already have a solution.
The Breakthrough: AppSheet Was Enough All Along
The real "aha" moment came when I realised AppSheet could handle all of it, natively. I’d already got it generating the PDF and consistently sending emails—my mistake was assuming it had to land in my personal Drive folder.
The key unlocks:
PDF Generation: AppSheet was already creating PDFs from templates. The issue wasn’t generation—it was where the file ended up.
Shared Drive Foldering: I discovered I could set the default AppSheet storage path to a Shared Drive, and dynamically generate folder names using formulas like
Asset123-Job456. AppSheet would create the folder if it didn’t exist and save everything there—photos and PDFs included.Emailing External Users: Despite my assumptions, AppSheet can email external parties, so long as the app is trusted in Google Admin. That meant no need for a Workspace Enterprise upgrade.
Once those clicked, the complexity evaporated:
Operator fills out the Rail Sign form in AppSheet.
Submission triggers a bot: generates PDF → emails it to the customer and CCs the boss.
All files are saved directly into a Google Shared Drive in a dynamically created folder.
Done. No external services. No duct tape. Just clean automation.
Outcome: From Frankenstein to One-Stop Solution
Rail Sign now runs daily for Rail Shine’s team. Operators hit submit, customers get a polished report, and the office gets clean records in Drive.
Even better? No Zapier subscription. No Make flow management. No Workspace upgrade. Just one AppSheet app doing its job well.
It’s not glamorous—but it works. It’s maintainable. And it's much easier to debug or extend now that everything happens in one place.
Lessons learned:
Don’t assume your primary platform can’t do something—check first.
Every workaround comes with a tax (money, time, or hair loss).
Failing fast is still progress—as long as you don’t ship the failure.
Rail Sign now does exactly what ShineCheck set out to do—just cleaner, leaner, and entirely native. And yes, the founders loved the new name.
Job done.
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