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.
Project IDX is a browser-based development experience built on Google Cloud and powered by Codey, a foundational AI model trained on code and built on PaLM 2. It’s designed to make it easier to build, manage and deploy full-stack web and multiplatform applications, with popular frameworks and languages. Project IDX is also built on Code OSS, so it should feel familiar no matter what you’re building.
Where will the online Google Apps Script go next? Google have announced it’s latest experiment in browser based IDEs in the form of Project IDX. A key feature of Project IDX is integration with AI tools to help developers:
With Project IDX, we’re exploring how Google’s innovations in AI — including the Codey and PaLM 2 models powering Studio Bot in Android Studio, Duet in Google Cloud and more – can help you not only write code faster, but also write higher-quality code. Currently, Project IDX has smart code completion, an assistive chatbot, and contextual code actions like “add comments” and “explain this code”. Our AI capabilities are in their very early days, and we’re working on making IDX AI even better at helping you as you work.
Project IDX isn’t publicly available but there is a waitlist you can join from the website. Give Project IDX is an online IDE it will be interested to see if features are rolled into the Script Editor. At the very least as you can develop offline using tools like clasp it open up interesting opportunities for Apps Script development.
When we announced MakerSuite earlier this year, we were delighted to see people from all over the world sign up for the waitlist. With MakerSuite we want to help anyone become an AI maker and easily create innovative AI applications with Google’s large generative models. We’re excited to see how it’s being used.
Today, we’re expanding access to MakerSuite to cover 179 countries and territories, including anyone with a Google Workspace account. This means that more developers than ever can sign up to create AI applications with our latest language model, PaLM 2.
We’ve recently featured a couple of posts on Pulse mostly from Aryan Irani on getting started Google GenAI tools in Google Apps Script. As part of these Google MakerSuite, a tool that lets developers start prototyping with Google’s large language models quickly and easily, is used as part of the API calls to PaLM. MakerSuite is still in private preview, but the good news in the linked announcement that the waitlist has been expanded to 179 countries. Given how Google have rolled out other GenAI tools, in particular Bard, I’m not surprised that EU countries are still not included, but find it strange at time of writing the United Kingdom is still not on the list. Despite this the announcement is worth a read to find about some other new features including automatic text prompt tips and data import/export to Google Sheets and by CSV.
Want to write better prompts? Now, you can write a text prompt and click “Prompt Suggestion” to get ideas and suggestions to get better responses – Image credit: Google
In this video you will find out how you can publish your app to the Google Workspace Marketplace.
Publishing a Google Workspace Add-on or Chat App can be a bit daunting. We’ve feature a couple of ‘how-to’ guides, which go into the detailed steps of the process, and my favourite has to be Alice Keeler’s top tips for getting your Google Workspace Add-on published. If you are still unsure about the Google Workspace Marketplace publication options and information required this video from Chanel Greco gives an overview of the entire process from start to finish.
