Squirrel365 v1.18 has been a while in the making! It has been driven by our desire to keep feature parity between the client tool/desktop designer experience and the new browser based designer experience that we are about to roll out. It’s full of exciting new features designed to streamline your app building workflow.

Expanding cloud platform capabilities

Versions and Autosave

2024 in a nutshell

What an incredible year 2024 has been, so there’s no better time to do our first year in review!

Together, we’ve made remarkable progress in both our product and community. These achievements wouldn’t have been possible without the unwavering support of our amazing customers and community.

Thank you for choosing to build with Squirrel365. Your feedback and collaboration with our product and engineering teams have been invaluable, driving continuous improvement and innovation.

We’re excited to share our successes with you—from groundbreaking new integrations to the growth of our community and learning resources. Here’s to another year of innovation and collaboration!

Word is getting out

The number of people building apps with Squirrel grew by over 30% in 2024

An incredible 8,714 new apps were published

And published content got over 18 million views. That’s an app, created using Squirrel365, being viewed somewhere in the world every 1.75 seconds

Engaging our community

Throughout the year, the Squirrel365 team hosted webinars and posted articles and blogs sharing product updates, use case insights, and how-to’s with our growing community.

The Squirrel365 team use the platform to keep you informed of product updates and news, hints and tips etc. But far more importantly over 63% of the content in 2024 was generated by people like you. The number of members in our online community has grown by 53% in 2024, meaning a much bigger pool of like-minded Squirrel enthusiasts sharing their knowledge and experiences.

If you haven’t joined the community yet, what are you waiting for? Visit the community and log in with your Squirrel365 credentials.

Game changing features

We introduced a tonne of new features in our Winter and Summer releases as we continue to make app building accessible to more than just developers.

Automate PDF and PPTX document generation

In 2024 a primary use case emerged. You told us you were using Squirrel365 to build value calculators. With Squirrel365’s spreadsheet logic engine, it’s the perfect fit for bespoke/custom calculators using what-if style analysis interactive inputs and outputs. We created the PDF/PPTX generator to turn those ROI and pricing calculators into invaluable tools that can automate the creation of PDF documents, PowerPoint slides or Excel Workbooks. Think auto creation of business cases or quotations tailored to the user/prospect/customer.

OAuth for google sheets and Excel Online

A key milestone in democratising app creation is providing the ability to securely source data from online sources that we all have access to. By adding authenticated connectivity to Google Sheets and Excel, we made it possible to browse Google Drive, or One Drive to select a spreadsheet to be used as a live data source for your app.

Not only that but because we’re talking directly to the Google Sheet or Excel document, we can now update and insert rows too! Turn your project into an application with write-back capabilities, no database needed!

Progressive Web Applications (PWA)

PWA’s have been around for a while. Last year saw an increase in their popularity mainly due to app developers growing tired of the high percentages taken when selling apps via app stores. PWA’s allow you to visit a website or web app and install it as application on your device. This felt like a natural fit for Squirrel365 apps so we added this as an option for subscribers to the Builder plan. Customise your app with a name and an icon and you have something that looks and feels like a native app on mobile devices.

Custom code and more

Throughout 2024 we saw an increased demand for complex/highly customised apps. We often solved challenges with custom code to get an app to look a certain way, or do more than is available with standard components. What started as a quick fix for some of our consulting projects made it into the core product to allow the use of use Custom CSS and Javascript.

We also added support for Google Tag Manager so that you can add even more custom code (via tags) to your apps. Need to track conversions, get enhanced analytics, add cookie compliance? Our GTM feature, allows you to do just that!

Where we went…

IBIS

2024 saw the second ever customer influence session conducted at the IBIS Conference. It provided an opportunity to reflect on the features and enhancements that were directly influenced by regular Squirrel users. By the end of 2024 we had managed to deliver 12 out of the 17 top voted enhancements. As always talking to customers proved invaluable and revealed insights that we simply cannot get from data and product analytics alone.

Company catch-ups at The Wave, Bristol

As a 100% remote company it’s nice when we come together.

This year we started meeting at The Wave for company catch ups and workshops. It’s an inland surfing lake that has meeting rooms to hire and a cool café to work from. More recently, we extended this to ‘work together Fridays’. It’s completely optional and gives people a chance to just turn up and work with others. We’ve even had a few customers join us. If you are ever in the Bristol area just let us know as it’s great to work, chat and innovate together over a coffee.

Looking ahead to 2025

A lot of work has happened already, in preparation for our next release. This will include a soft launch of our designer in the browser experience, making it easier for people to get started without having to install anything. For those of us that prefer to use a client tool, the current desktop designer isn’t going anywhere. It’s essentially the same code base so we can ensure feature parity (as much as possible) between the two experiences.

Some of the other cool features to look forward to:

• Image library
• Autosave (cloud saved files and versioning
• Layout containers to support responsive design
• Custom fonts
• And we’ve turned a few of our add-on functions into native functions, making them part of the core product, and improving the experience.

To everyone who has been part of our journey so far — customers, partners, and team members – Congratulations on all the achievements of 2024. We can’t wait to work together to make an even more remarkable 2025.

Learn what’s new in version 1.17 of Squirrel365.

Learn what’s new in version 1.16 of Squirrel365. This latest release contains several bug fixes, improvements and new features. We are excited to see what people do with them.

Project Settings and Saving SQRL files

We’ve created a new central location for project-specific settings. Previously, some of these existed on the main canvas properties although you could override them at publish time which confused many. We’ve simplified this now, and moved everything to a new location accessed via the FILE menu. Found under FILE > Project Settings. head here to change things like:

• The name of the published project
• How it looks and scales when you publish
• Expiry dates and passwords etc.

 

 

 

Anything set in Project Settings applies to your whole project and is saved as part of your SQRL file.

We’ve also added the option to automatically save a copy of your SQRL file when you publish a project to the cloud. You’ll find the option under the Performance section of Project Settings.

 

Donald MacCormick did a great job summarising the benefit of this feature on the Community site: “Squirrel designers no longer have to keep track of which version of their SQRL files were used to publish which version of their cloud projects; the SQRL file can be automatically saved to the cloud when it is published, and so each version of the published project has its own SQRL file saved with it.”

 

With this option turned on you can access the download from the new download icon in either the Project Manager or the Version Manager.

 

 

Tidying up and consolidating project settings is useful but what about all new functionality for Squirrel365 in v1.16?

 

New connectors

Smartsheet connectivity

With 1.16 we’ve created a new suite of connectors for Smartsheets. Allowing you to read data from your sheets, as well as insert or update rows of data. Building apps on top of your Smartsheets has never been easier.

 

Google Sheets and Excel connectivity

We have been able to connect to Google Sheets and Excel online documents for some time. Up until 1.16 you had to create a share link for your document, make it publicly accessible, and then use that in Squirrel. This worked well, however:

• there were performance challenges with accessing the documents,
• the documents had to be publicly accessible
• you could only retrieve data via Squirrel, if you wanted to save data back you had to use Zapier and pay for Zaps.

Now, that’s all changed! Squirrel 1.16 has direct connectivity to both Google Sheets and Excel online, with no need to create share links. Simply browse Google Drive, or One Drive to locate your document, and you’re away! Squirrel can then retrieve your spreadsheet data live and use it in your project.

Not only that but because we’re talking directly to the Google Sheet or Excel document, we can now update and insert rows too! Turn your project into an application with write-back capabilities, no database needed!

 

Progressive Web Applications

Progressive Web Applications, or PWAs, are web applications that have the ability to look and feel like native, stand-alone, desktop or mobile applications. There is loads of potential for what you can do with PWAs, but in 1.16 we’ve just implemented what we believe are the bare essentials:

• The ability to set an application name and icon
• Enable people to “install” the application on desktop and mobile devices
• Leverage caching so that the application works without internet connectivity*

*Obviously, if your application has live data connectivity, you will still need the internet.

Enabling and configuring PWA can be found in the “Project Settings” window.

 

Wrapping up

We’ve been working on the direct Google / Excel connectivity and PWA framework for some time, and it’s great to see that it’s finally ready to be made available to the Squirrel community. I’m excited to see what people create with these new features.

🎄On the first day of ‘Squirrel-mas’…🎄

We found a Squirrel in an oak tree!

As Christmas comes closer, the Squirrel team wanted to have a little festive fun! Taking the “12 Days of Christmas” song, we explored Squirrel to see if we could list items for each day in the song. 

As the first gift in the song is “a partridge in a pear tree…” we thought we’d start with a squirrel in an oak tree – a little light-hearted nod to our product’s namesake. We looked at some of our favourite functions and components for each of the other eleven days.

🎄On the second day of ‘Squirrel-mas’…🎄

We played with the two Media components!

The Image and Icon components add much-needed visual aspects to any project. Whether they be diagrams, photographs, or icon-based navigation buttons, any of these media components can make a difference.

🎄On the third day of ‘Squirrel-mas’…🎄

We remembered the three Squirrel core-project concepts

1 / Binding
2 / Data Insertion
3 / Dynamic Visibility

These remain constant when it comes to building your projects in Squirrel.

🎄On the fourth day of ‘Squirrel-mas’…🎄

We explored the four available canvas size options.

Available from the get go, you can jump right in with our default canvas options. Each device category has a drop-down that expands containing more standard canvas sizes.

Or, if there’s a size you specifically want, use the Custom option to enter your own canvas Width and Height.

🎄On the fifth day of ‘Squirrel-mas’…🎄

We were inspired by five projects built by other users – take a look!

1 / Animated Data Table with Spotify Data – Josh Tapley
2 / Dashboard Color Checker – Cameron Seamons
3 / Using Squirrel for Multi user / Live applications – Rob Scott
4 / Custom Visualization: Rounded Gradient Bar Chart – Josh Tapley
5 / Play Tetris – Graham Ames

🎄On the sixth day of ‘Squirrel-mas’…🎄

We looked into the six steps for project building!

1 / Start with the spreadsheet… as the powerhouse of your project, it provides both the data and the logic.
2 / Add components… with a library packed full of charts, tables, image and text components, you choose how you want to present your data.
3 / Bring your content to life… connect your components to cells in the spreadsheet and watch the magic happen!
4 / Connect to your data… connect your Squirrel projects to external data so they are always up to date.
5 / Publish and share… embed into SharePoint or other websites using cloud embed code, or export and host locally on your own web server.
6 / Manage with ease… activate and deactivate your published projects or change their sharing options in the Squirrel Project Manager

Check them out on our website’s Features page!

🎄On the seventh day of ‘Squirrel-mas’…🎄

We experimented with the seven Data Insertion types!

1 / Position – Insert the selected item’s position in the list into the spreadsheet
2 / Series Name – Enter the name of the selected Series into the spreadsheet
3 / Category Name – Enter the name of the selected Category into the spreadsheet
4 / Value – Enter a specified value or set of values into the spreadsheet
5 / Row – Enter a selected row or rows of data into the spreadsheet based on the value selected
6 / Column – Enter a selected column or columns into the spreadsheet based on the value selected
7 / Status List – Create a status list to track the status of selected and deselected values

🎄On the eighth day of ‘Squirrel-mas’…🎄

We pushed the limits of the eight Conditional Logic comparators!

1 / ‘=’ Equals
2 / ‘<>’ Is Not
3 / ‘<’ Less Than
4 / ‘<=’ Less Than/ Equal to
5 / ‘>’ Greater Than
6 / ‘>=’ Greater Than/ Equal to
7 / ‘Is Empty’
8 / ‘Is Not Empty’

🎄On the ninth day of ‘Squirrel-mas’…🎄

We explored the nine Component categories!

1 / Charts – Line Chart, Bar Chart, Pie Chart…
2 / Data Viz – Gauge, Gantt, Word Cloud…
3 / Tables – Data Table, Scorecard…
4 / Controls – Push Button, Drop-down, Radio Button…
5 / Text – Text Input, Text Label…
6 / Shapes – Rectangle, Line, Ellipse…
7 / Media – Image, Icons…
8 / Containers – Repeat Container, Web View…
9 / Add-ons – Check available add-ons here!

🎄On the tenth day of ‘Squirrel-mas’…🎄

We tidied up the visual elements of our projects using the ten Alignment Options

1 / Align to left-side
2 / Align to centre
3 / Align to right-side
4 / Align to top
5 / Align to middle
6 / Align to bottom
7 / Distribute horizontally
8 / Distribute vertically
9 / Match height
10 / Match width

Don’t forget!! The first object you select is the one that all the alignment, size and position operations will be based on.

🎄On the eleventh day of ‘Squirrel-mas’…🎄

We downloaded our eleven most popular add-ons! They’ve been a hit since we launched the Marketplace!

1 / Gradient Background
2 / File Loader
3 / Unique List
4 / Range Slider
5 / Alert Icon
6 / Lottie Animations
7 / Toast
8 / Window Size
9 / Sparkchart
10 / Copy To Clipboard
11 / Card Slider

🎄On the twelfth day of ‘Squirrel-mas’…🎄

We made a list of our twelve favourite fonts available in Squirrel!

1 / Poppins
2 / Montserrat
3 / Ubuntu
4 / Lato
5 / Open Sans
6 / Source Sans Pro
7 / Bree Serif
8 / Rubik
9 / Heebo
10 / Roboto Slab
11 / Signika
12 / Noto Sans

And that about wraps it up!

With this in mind, we would like to invite all of you to participate in the challenge by creating your own ’12 days of Squirrel-mas’ list. We have created a challenge on the Squirrel Community page where you can share yours and we will make sure to highlight our favourite entries.

From all of us here at Squirrel365, we wish you all a very happy Christmas!

We’ve been inspired by all the great projects that we have seen since the release of 1.15. It was possibly one of our most feature-filled releases and has helped expand on project innovation and creativity within the product. One of these notable feature releases was the Repeat Container component, which repeated any objects put within it and dynamically updated the bindings with each row.

We tried it for ourselves!

We’re no strangers to ‘eating our own dog food’ (a phrase common in the software development world that means to use your own product). There are many Squirrel projects embedded as part of our website. For example, the price comparison matrix was created before the repeat container existed. This was crying out to be rebuilt using the new repeat container.

So we set about rebuilding the price comparison matrix to see how much quicker it it would be to construct.

A huge time-saver

The first iteration of the comparison matrix consisted of over 300+ components and took roughly 6 hours to build. This included building the spreadsheet, creating and binding the components, and grouping them into sections and layouts.

Taking what we had with the original project, we managed to drastically cut the number of components used. The time it took to implement the repeat container was significantly less, and created a more streamlined project.

We had to do some workarounds…

Initially, we hit a few small issues but nothing we couldn’t overcome. One such case was the mix of Text Label and Icon components in the first section, under “Usage”. Due to the nature of the repeat container, we knew that with each repeated row, it was not possible to change the component that was being “repeated”.

As such, we came to a compromise. Under each of the sub. columns we have – Free, Creator and Builder – we placed both a text label and an icon.

And now for the ‘magic’ that we call dynamic visibility!…

Knowing that the Text labels were the majority item shown in this section, we could go ahead and leave these as they are. We know that this is safe because one of the repeated spreadsheet sections was a series of blank cells. This meant that even if the labels were repeated, alongside the icons, it would just show the blank data!

Let’s take a look:

After this, we had to take the icons we had in our first row of components and set up the DV.

Now, we knew that these blank cells were going to be where our icons were showing. So, all we needed to do was say the following:

‘when this cell is blank, show the icon’

which was as simple as binding the icon’s DV Value to the same cell that the Text Label was reading from. As the repeat container then updated the bindings, it would read the cell below.

Used and approved by us!

The net result? A lot less time to build and a lot less components. We updated the matrix on the website… and you can’t even tell it’s changed!! However, this new version is more more dynamic and flexible and a way easier to maintain. 

💙 Check it out here in our blog ‘Save time with the ‘Repeat-Grid’ component!’

Paving the way for greater things to come

Version 1.15 contains a number of enhancements specifically designed to address some of the pain points with creating and maintaining Squirrel projects.

Bulk property editing – As a step towards common property editing, you can now select multiple components of the same kind and change a property across all of them in one go. This, along with the new font switcher, capability makes it easier to style and configure multiple components at once.

Impact analysis – Want to know if something is inserting into that cell? What about formulas that might be referencing it. Impact analysis is here to help and is only the beginning. Impact Analysis is just the start of the enhancements we have planed to make working with and maintaining your projects easier.

Scorecard/data table – The foundations of scorecard and data table have been completely re-written from the ground up. This is in preparation for adding tons more functionality in the future. Your old scorecards and data tables remain un-changed but any new ones aded will be using the new components.

New Features

Bulk property editing

Select multiple objects of the same type and you can now update a property and have it applied to all of the selected items.

The image above shows 3 Text Input components selected. The top part of the property panel indicated that you are in a bulk property editing mode and and any changes are applied to al of the selected objects.

NB: this currently doesn’t work across groups and containers (i.e. different levels of the object hierarchy)

If you select components of different types then the property panel exposes only the size, position and dynamic visibility properties as these are common across all canvas objects.

Font switcher

Find and replace fonts in bulk using the font switcher.

Changing the font used in a project (especially after you were a considerable way into its creation) used to be painful. Now you can get a list of used fonts and styles and switch then easily for another.

To access the font switcher, from the main menu, go to EDIT > Find & Replace fonts. This brings up the fonts dialogue showing a list of all the font, size and style combinations used in your project.

Find the existing font that you want to replace and select the new settings in the ‘Replace with…’ section. When you click apply changes this will update all instances of it.

This action cannot be undone using the undo command. If you want to revert your changes simply go to Find & Replace fonts to change it back.

Repeat Container (repeated rows)

The new repeat container automatically repeats components in rows and updates the bindings accordingly.

Arrange, style and configure the objects inside the repeat container, including any bindings. Then the magic happens when you bind the container to a range that contains all the values that should be dynamically replaced in the property bindings for each new instance of the object/component.

To make this work your data needs to be in a certain structure. Specifically, organised as a continuous block of data/values.

The repeat container works by looking at the length of the range and repeating its contents for every row that exists in the block. It will loop through and automatically increment the bindings from the original component property.

 

Conditional logic

We’ve extended the conditional logic on dynamic visibility to other areas including triggers. This gives you more precise control over when something is triggered and helping you to keep your spreadsheet logic simple.

It has also been added to any visual components that have the ‘Disable when…’ option.

We’ll be adding it to more functions and connections in future releases.

Impact Analysis

If you’ve ever inherited a .sqrl file from someone else… or even come back to one that you created months ago and wondered how on earth it works. This is the product update for you.

With Impact analysis we’ve made it possible to select a cell in the spreadsheet and find out what components, functions or connections are bound to that cell, or even what formulas are referencing it.

Inspect Bindings

Right click on the cell in question and select ‘Inspect Bindings’.

This will open the Bind inspector view and give you a list of all the components, functions and connections that have a property bound to that cell. Clicking on one of the items in this view will select it in the object browser and highlight the any properties bound to that cell in the property panel.

Inspect Cell References

Right click on a cell select ‘Inspect Cell References’ (If this option is greyed out it is because there are no references).

This will open the ‘cell reference explorer’. A panel with 2 lists; References and Referenced By.

The References column contains a list of cells/ranges that the cell you are inspecting uses in a formula. I.e. the cell contains a formula that references these cell/ranges. They are ‘upstream’ of the current formula.

The Referenced By column contains a list of all the cells/ranges that are referencing the cell you are expecting. i.e. the cell is referenced in a formula in another cell/range. They are ‘downstream’ of the current cell.

Clicking on any of the links will navigate to that cell in the spreadsheet and become the subject of the cell reference explorer. Using this method you can traverse up and down the formula tree, tracing formulas though.

Tab order

In previous versions there was little control over the order in which form elements received focus. Increasingly we are seeing simple forms created using Squirrel and being able to tab into or select those fields using the keyboard and not a mouse is key to both speeding up the workflow for the end user as well as providing a more native app feel.

Form components such as Text Input, Value Input, Check Boxes and Radio Buttons have received a new property called Tab Index.

This allows you to manually define the order in which elements on the screen get focus. We’ve added new focus states so that the end user to can follow the focus/cursor more easily.

The lower the number the earlier the order of focus. So, for example, setting something to 1 will ensure it is the first component to get focus. A Tab index setting of 6 will receive focus before components with a tab index of 7 or greater.

By default there is no index value set meaning the browser default behaviour is observed.

Disabling the Tab Index property means the component will never receive focus.

When collapsed the dropdown displays the number of selected items.

The release of the new Tetris movie on Apple TV got the Squirrel365 team thinking about Tetris and whether it is possible to create a no-code version. Squirrel365, if you’re not aware, is a no-code app development platform that basically uses spreadsheet formulas as the logic layer of your application. Tetris, the game, uses simple 4 block shapes to fill a gameboard.  There are a number of resources out there teaching you to build Tetris using programming languages such as this javascript youtube tutorial, others have gone for an easy visual coding environment such as Scratch a programming language popular with kids learning to code.  All these options rely on code for the visuals and the game mechanics.

Fun fact did you know the 4 block shapes use in Tetris are called tetrominoes

So how easy would it be to create Tetris with a no-code platform?

At the most fundamental level, the gameboard is very similar to the grid inside a spreadsheet.  A Google search (or a ChatGPT enquiry) will tell you it’s possible to create Tetris in Excel, but you must use VBA to create it.

VBA or Visual Basic for Applications is a programming language you can use to make Excel do clever things.  But if you must resort to programming to build Tetris, why use Excel, when it could just be coded?  However, with Squirrel, you can also do clever things without writing code!

The challenge: Can you make a Tetris game with Squirrel365?

So a couple of weeks ago, we set this challenge to our community members.

The rules of the challenge were simple… 

• No add-ons,
• No coding,
• Just native Squirrel functionality and spreadsheet logic.

This was no doubt a complicated challenge. Which might require a bit of lateral thinking and some chunky spreadsheet formulas. Our very own Graham (from the Squirrel365 development team) took the challenge on and created this no-code version of Tetris.

It uses 2 data movers and 1 timer, along with spreadsheet logic to make it work.  The UI was achieved with rectangles and buttons.  There’s still a few bugs to iron out, and scoring to add, but overall it’s looking and feeling pretty good!

This proved to be the inspiration needed to get the community going! Finally one of our community members Josh blew us away with his version of no-code Tetris shortly after! Test out Josh’s Tetris version here.

Want to share your version of Tetris with us?

It’s fair to say that this challenge caused a fair bit of head-scratching for even the sharpest Squirrel users! But it’s not impossible, and the results prove that with some imagination and some spreadsheet logic anything is possible in Squirrel365.

If you fancy adding your version of Tetris to the table, it’s not too late! See the full conversation on the Squirrel community here.

Performance improvements

Runtime load performance

Load components on demand. There is a new option (on by default) to only load components when they become visible (and therefore active). As a result, any newly published projects should load in the browser much faster now.

File open times reduced

Large/complex projects now open in a fraction of the time.

Calculation engine improvements

The spreadsheet is getting quicker too. We’ve optimised how the calculation engine runs to get the same results with less processing

Scrollbars on containers

In version 1.14 the container component now includes an option to enable scrollbars. Turn this on to get scrollbars appearing.

When positioning objects inside the container you need to re-size it, to be able to fit all the objects inside, then re-size it back down to the size you want the scrolling container to be.

Conditional Logic for Dynamic Visibillity

You can now choose to show or hide components based on more than just matching a value.

 

Tableau Parameters

The new Tableau Parameter function makes passing data into your embedded Squirrel projects a cinch. You’ll find it under the list of functions.

Simply name your parameters and bind the destination range to the area in the squirrel project where you want the data to come in. They then appear in the list of parameters to be configured in the Squirrel365 add-on for Tableau.

Image fit option on images

Sometimes an image doesn’t fit nicely in the space you want it to occupy. To help with this we’ve added the Image fit option to the image component. Choose between Contain, Fill and Cover to manipulate the image within the dimensions of the component. Using the image fit option cover, the image keeps its aspect ratio and fills the component, clipping the image to fit.

Set the image position using the Image fit position option to control how it should be clipped.

Customise sankey styling

You can now change the colour of the text labels on a Sankey chart so that they are readable against a dark background.

There is also the option to stop the text truncating or to have it wrap. Plus you can select which node (From or To) controls the colour of the path.

That’s about it for our roundup of what’s new in version 1.14. To see these changes in action why not watch this 8 min video of the 1.14 release highlights  here