Whether you are a seasoned Workspace developer, just getting started, or somewhere in between, the Google Workspace Developer Summit is a great opportunity to learn more about how you build creative and unique solutions for your business or even the world.
The Google Workspace Developer Relations team are back on the road with in-person summits scheduled for Singapore, Bangalore, Amsterdam and Zürich. These events are a great opportunity find out what is new in the Google Workspace developer ecosystem as well as meeting other people interested integrating and extending Google Workspace products.
Given the nature of Google Workspace, don’t feel you have to be a pro-coder to classify yourself as a ‘Workspace Developer’. Products and features like AppSheet and the Duet AI increasingly blur the lines creating opportunities for a growing audience for Google Workspace centred workflows and solutions.
The full day events are free to attend and you can register to join at the following dates/locations:
We are excited to roll out to GA (General Availability) our first visual editing features to all AppSheet creators, starting today.
This a new way for AppSheet creators to make changes to their apps and navigate the editor. It’s intuitive for anyone to point at what they want to change if they can see it. We are now letting you do that in the editor: you can now hover on visual components of the editor’s app view and see possible editor actions for the outlined component.
Google recently announced the rollout of new new visual editing features in AppSheet. The new feature should help simplify and speed up app development (see the source post for an animated gif / video of what it looks like). In the announcement Google mention that the new feature isn’t available for all components:
Outlines are only available for some components visible in the app. For instance, Detail and Form Views have a lot more controls than the Deck View right now. Additionally, only some Editor actions are available, such as navigating users to Data components, View components, Action components and some of the general Settings.
More updates are planned and if you don’t see this feature in AppSheet yet the rollout has been paused for Google Cloud Next and should be available for everyone soon.
Unfortunately, there are no built-in methods for directly managing PDF data using Google Apps Script. Fortunately, after the V8 runtime has been released, several raw Javascript libraries could be used with Google Apps Script. pdf-lib is also one of them. When this is used, PDF data can be cooked over Google Apps Script. In this report, I would like to introduce achieving this using a Google Apps Script library.
Google Apps Script is a powerful tool for automating tasks. It can be used to process data, create spreadsheets, and send emails. One of the limitations of Apps Script is that it does not have built-in support for PDF files. However, there are a number of third-party libraries that can be used to work with PDF files and in Pulse we’ve featured a number of posts from Kanshi Tanaike where they have explored the pdf-lib is a JavaScript library.
This work has culminated in PDFApp, a dedicated Apps Script library created by Kanshi Tanaike based on the pdf-lib, but optimised for Apps Script. The source post includes a number of recipes for handling PDF files listed below:
Are you looking for a way to receive notifications in real-time when an important spreadsheet in your Google Drive get modified or is accidently deleted by sometimes? Well, Google Drive offers an API to help you set up a watch on any file in your Google Drive be it a document, presentation or even a PDF file. This means that you can receive instant notifications whenever the content or even permissions of that file changes.
This tutorial explains how you can setup watch notifications on any file in your Google Drive with the help of Google Apps Script.
As part of the Google Drive API you can set up watch notifications on any file in your Google Drive. This means you can receive instant notifications whenever the content or permissions of that file changes. This feature can be useful for a number of scenarios, for example, if you have sensitive Drive files that you want to closely monitor, or a workflow where you’d like to trigger additional events when a file is updated.
This post from Amit Agarwal explains how you can create a push notification for a Google Drive file using Google Apps Script. As noted in the post you can use Google Apps Script to handle the push notification by creating a doPost Web App, however, not all the response data/headers are available using Google Apps Script. There is a related ticket which had some activity earlier in the year and I would encourage you to star the request to get updates and encourage Google to fix – https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/67764685.
Google Workspace Admins looking for domain/user activity on Drive files might want to look at the Reports API activities endpoint, which can be configured to setup similar watch notifications. You can read more in the Reports API: Drive Activity Report overview.
In this session learn about combining APIs, automation, configuration as code, and more to improve your productivity using Google Workspace.
If you, or someone you know, is lucky to be at Google Cloud Next ’23 on Day 1 and would like a turbocharge to your Apps Script journey head down to the Moscone South, Lower Level and towards the Innovators Hive Theater for 11am as you’ll be in for a treat as Kara Ireland and Charles Maxson will let you know “How to get the most out of Google Workspace with Apps Script”.
I was part of a similar session at Next ’18 and it was great to meet in person new and established Apps Script users, many of them I’ still in touch with today. If you end up going say ‘hi’ to Kara and Charles from me.
Next ’23 is our global exhibition of inspiration, innovation, and education. It’s where decision makers, developers, and anyone passionate about an accessible, scalable, socially responsible cloud come together to share challenges, solutions, 10x ideas, and game-changing technologies.
Google Cloud Next ’23 is just around the corner and if you are attending in person the Google Workspace Developer Relations team will be there in force giving various talk as well having a booth at the Innovator Hive. Chanel Greco has also put the call out to:
Bring your biggest smile for the community picture at our booth at the Innovators Hive:
📷 Day 1: 1PM
📸 Day 2: 11AM
😁 Day 3: 1PM
The eagerly awaited project history capability for Google Apps Script in now rolling out. The feature is similar to the version history functionality found in other Google Workspace editors like Google Docs. As well as being able to see differences between the current and previous versions you can restore your script project to that point. Unlike Docs, Sheets and Slides there is currently no ability to ‘make a copy’ or ‘name a version’. My experience when using the Drive revisions data is that Google may merge revisions to save storage space.
Imagine you’re managing a Google Group, where important attachments are regularly sent. Manually saving these attachments to your Google Drive can be time-consuming and prone to errors. Is there a way to automate this process and ensure that you don’t miss any crucial documents?
It’s quite easy to tie yourself in knots when it comes to scheduling tasks in Google Apps Script to handle data created since the last run. This Medium post from Pablo Pallocchi shows a nice way your can structure Gmail searches using the after: operator combined with a ‘last execution date’ stored in Apps Script Properties Service. The result is a nice solution design to backup attachments sent to a Google Group to Google Drive. There’s lots of scope for extending and/or modifying this solution. All the details are in the source post.
To bring the power of AppSheet to more users, AppSheet Core licenses will now be included for the following Google Workspace editions…
By including AppSheet Core licenses in more Google Workspace editions, the power of AppSheet is accessible to more users. Further, Admins will have the security features they need to ensure their users are using AppSheet appropriately in their organization.
Previously AppSheet Core licenses were included with Workspace Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Essentials Plus, and Education Plus users. Google have recently announced that AppSheet Core licenses will also be included in the following Google Workspace editions:
Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
Enterprise Starter and Standard
Frontline Starter and Standard
Non-profits
Education Standard
This is great news for Google Workspace users as AppSheet includes a number of out-of-the box features which already integrate into other Workspace products, like dynamic emails, Google Chat and Google Apps Script integration.
Along with the expansion of Workspace editions getting AppSheet Core, is the news that Admins will have basic security controls which can disable external usage of AppSheet apps.
Looking at the associated new security settings support page, it was interesting to see that turning on AppSheet Core security will disable ‘external integration through the app API’:
Finally a little plug. If you are interested in AppSheet and would like to find out about training and support services get in touch. At CTS, where I work, we’ve a growing reputation in both products built using AppSheet as well as helping you get the most from the platform in your organisation.
This guide will walk you through creating a public Google Workspace Add-on, and launching it in the Google Workspace Marketplace for as free as possible. …
I’d never developed or published an add-on before. As I was looking into it, I realized that, while it is not super complicated, it is not readily obvious — especially for anyone just getting into add-on development. Google does have a guide on developing and publishing an add-on but it leaves a lot of unanswered questions.
So I thought I would put together what I learned in this guide — a playbook for anyone else who wants to develop their own add-on.
Following on from a recent Pulse post on How to publish to the Google Workspace Marketplace published by the Google Workspace team, here’s a developer’s take on the process from start to finish. As mentioned in the post the official support resources should be your start point, but these notes spotlight some of the nuances required to publish an add-on and the appendix includes some tips on naming your add-on and where/how to host required documentation including your add-on privacy policy.
