AppsScriptPulse

Google Cloud Next 24 agenda builder is LIVE! Reserve your sessions NOW and spotlight on Google Workspace related topics 


Google Next is only a few short weeks away and as of this morning, the Agenda builder is live. In this video I walk through how I choose which sessions to attend, and my recommended Google Workspace sessions.

Jesse Nowlin, tabGeeks founder and Google Workspace Admin expert, has complied this great video with tips on how to get the most out of Google Cloud Next ’24. Jesse has highlighted a number of Google Workspace related sessions which are linked from the video description.

Jesse has included the session Charles Maxson, Kara Ireland and myself (Martin Hawksey) will be doing on Day 3 April 11, 2024 at 11:00 AM – 11:45 AM PDT on Apps Script and Gemini: Build custom AI-powered Google Workspace solutions. Kara and I have already started discussing tactics for getting the mic off of Charles. The session is demo packed and hopefully full takeaways that can help with your own Gemini API powered Google Workspace solutions.

The entire Totally Unscripted crew will actually be at Next ’24 with Alice Keeler giving a Lightning Talk on Duet Your Data. If you are one of the anticipated 40K attendees (⊙_⊙’) please come and say hello. Finally, if you haven’t registered yet Jesse has a referral link in his video description.

Source: Google Cloud NEXT 24 Agenda Builder is LIVE! Reserve Your Sessions NOW

Totally Unscripted: “The Answer is Always a Spreadsheet” featuring Ben Collins 06 March 2024 at 1200 PT / 1500 ET / 2000 GMT

Whether you are managing projects, calculating budgets, forecasting sales, or just tracking your own to-do lists, there is almost always a spreadsheet involved.

In this episode of Totally Unscripted, we get back to basics and discuss the versatility and pure power (and joy) of spreadsheets! Joining us live is guest Ben Collins, who is a renowned spreadsheet educator, Google Developer Expert and Google Sheets master, and someone who has earned the honorary title of “King of Functions”. Ben will talk and answer your questions about trends, best practices, and of course demonstrate a few of his favourite functions that will confirm that “The Answer is Always a Spreadsheet” still rings true!

As always the show is broadcast live and you can ask questions via the YouTube chat, but also feel free to get your questions in early using the comments.

Show Live/Recording link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxoTBH4OTtY

Totally Unscripted: Beyond Basic Bots – Building Intelligent Assistants with Google Chat and Vertex AI 21 February, 2024 at 1200 PT / 1500 ET / 2000 GMT

Totally Unscripted returns on 21 February 2024 at at 1200 PT / 1500 ET / 2000 GMT with an episode exploring how you can unleash the power of intelligent assistants and apps in Google Chat.

Say goodbye to simple chatbots and hello to intelligent assistants and apps! On 21 February 2024 at at 1200 PT / 1500 ET / 2000 GMT on Totally Unscripted, we dive into the world of building advanced enterprise apps and assistants using interactive dialogs and Vertex AI in Google Chat.

As part of this, we will be exploring how you can harness the capabilities of the Google Chat Platform to promote collaborative work within Chat spaces, taking advantage of Google’s advanced machine learning models to create assistants that can help with complex tasks, such as summarizing conversations and generating complete task descriptions from simple titles.

Get ready to go beyond the basics and learn how to build sophisticated assistants that help you get more work done, collaborate with your team, and revolutionize the way you work with Google Chat and Google Workspace.

As always the show is broadcast live and you can ask questions via the YouTube chat, but also interested to hear in advance any of your burning questions for our panel using the comments section below.

Show Live/Recording link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGwj4dVTe4A

Totally Unscripted: Google Workspace Development: Now with a Side of Smart Chips! 07 February 2024, 2024 at 1200 PT / 1500 ET / 2000 GMT

Totally Unscripted is back on 07 February 2024, 2024 at 1200 PT / 1500 ET / 2000 GMT. There have been a number of saucy updates and announcements around Smart Chips and other integrations to Google Docs, as well as Sheets and Slides.

In this episode we review how you can start to create Google Workspace Add-ons for Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides users which let you preview links from your third-party services. In addition we will be dipping into how you can let users of Google Docs add third-party resources from the @ menu.

For this episode we will be joined by some of the Google team behind Smart Chips with guests Allison Hodsdon (Technical Writer at Google) and Pierrick Voulet (Developer Relations Engineer (Google Workspace) at Google.

As always the show is broadcast live and you can ask questions via the YouTube chat, but also interested to hear in advance any of your burning questions for our panel using the comments section below.

Show Live/Recording link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPrWpV_bf4c

Changes to drive.google.com/uc URLs which break embedding images/files from Google Drive in your websites and AppSheet apps

Google Drive broke the ability to embed images with the /uc path. Here’s how to embed images from Google Drive in your website.

Previously Google Workspace developers could use a /uc path for embedding images and other files hosted in Google Drive. For example, images could be embedded in websites and emails using markup like:

<img src="https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1234567890abcdef" />

To my knowledge this was never an officially documented endpoint, but widely known about and shared within the community. Back in October 2023 Google announced Upcoming changes to third-party cookie requirements in Google Drive, which has started rolling out from the beginning of 2024.

The impact of this change is it breaks /uc embeds and these have started returning 403 errors. There is no reference to the /uc endpoint in the original announcement, which is why I think many people are only just finding out about the impact now. Google’s official guidance is to move to <iframe> with Google Drive publish and preview links. This post from Justin Poehnelt discusses the options and limitations for images.

There has also just been another announcement in the AppSheet community that Drive download URLs for embeddable content to be updated by May 1st, 2024. This is an extended window for AppSheet users and where possible Google will be emailing affected app owners where /uc urls have been detected. This announcement includes a link to a help page with tips for finding /uc occurrences in your AppSheet apps.

Source: Embed images from Google Drive in your website | Justin Poehnelt

Unlock the power of your data with no-code! Join the CTS AppSheet Hackathon at the Google London 08 February 2024 

Be part of our AppSheet Hackathon Series in 2024! Join us at the Google office in London for this in-person event in February. Find out more.

My employer CTS/Appsbroker is hosting a free AppSheet Hackathon in Google Office in London on 08 February 2024. This in-person event is the first of four we are planning this year designed to bring both new and existing AppSheet users together to learn and share.

For new users there will be a guided ‘no-code along’ to help you get started, followed by a hackathon with on-hand support. You can find out more including registration by following the link (if you are able to attend my tip would be bring a work colleague as this will help you bottom out your business use cases). I’ll be attending the event so if you are able to attend please come and say ‘hi’.

Source: AppSheet Hackathon – CTS

Totally Unscripted: How developers are shaping the future with Google Workspace and GenAI – 24 January, 2024 at 1200 PT / 1500 ET / 2000 GMT

For the next live broadcast of Totally Unscripted we will be exploring how Vertex AI and other GenAI solutions can be used to extend the capabilities of Google Workspace with targeted solutions that integrate seamlessly with Google Workspace Add-ons, Editor Add-ons, Chat apps, Drive apps, and more!

In this episode we will be joined by a panel of expert guests: Donato Meli (Workspace Go-To-Market at Google), Mohammad Al-Ansari (Developer Advocate (Partnerships) at Google), and Allen Firstenberg (Project Guru at Objective Consulting, Inc).

As always the show is broadcast live and you can ask questions via the YouTube chat, but also interested to hear in advance any of your burning questions for our panel using the comments section below.

We will be LIVE on 24 January, 2024 at 1200 PT / 1500 ET / 2000 GMT

Show Live/Recording link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPrWpV_bf4c

Totally Unscripted Returns! Since We’ve Been Gone: A Recap – 10 January, 2024 at 1200 PT / 1500 ET / 2000 GMT 

WE ARE BACK!!! Totally Unscripted returns for more Google Workspace Developer community chat about new features, popular solution trends, best practices, the Google Workspace Marketplace and everything else related to Google Workspace development.

To kick off the return of Totally Unscripted for Season 5, in this episode the TU crew will take a look back at some of the more significant updates and additions involving the Google Workspace Platform “Since they’ve been gone!”

As always the show is broadcast live and you can ask questions via chat, but also interested to hear in advance any of your questions using the comments section below.

Show Live/Recording link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-Z3BcAjRKk

[Event] Connected Workers: Using AppSheet to bring the frontline and head office together – Online October 19, 2023 at 14:00 UTC

Join us for an exciting showcase event with Google presenting an AppSheet demo developed to connect frontline workers with head office.

On October 19, 2023 at 14:00 UTC you can join me for a free online live webinar with Tony Martin, Google Workspace specialist and Dominic Parkes, Google Workspace Customer Engineer at Google to discuss a demo app created in Google AppSheet to help bring frontline/deskless workers and head office together more efficiently.

This session is an opportunity to discover how AppSheet can be used to make it easy to administer everyday business tasks such as: reporting sickness, managing shifts, payslips and HR records, onboarding and training. We’ll be discussing the benefits of using AppSheet to solve this problem and getting Tony and Dom’s top tips when it comes to Google AppSheet app creation.

Follow the source links to reserve your place…

Source: Connected Workers: Using AppSheet to bring the frontline and head office together – CTS Website

Management of rich text cell formatting in Google Sheets with Google Apps Script

In order to add and delete a text for the rich text in a cell, it is required to create a script while the current text style is kept. This is actually complicated. In this post, I would like to introduce the enriched management of rich text on Google Spreadsheet using Google Apps Script. In order to enrich the management of Rich Text using Google Apps Script, I created a library RichTextAssistant.

Some very clever work from Kanshi Tanaike which can help with the management of cell text formatting in Google Sheets.  The RichTextAssistant Apps Script library included in the post has some nice methods for both handling and preserving cell text formatting. It’s worth spend a little time checking the various samples provided to see what is possible and how these might enhance one of your own script projects.  If you are curious the source code for the library is also on GitHub and linked from the post.

Source: Enriched Management of Rich Text on Google Spreadsheet using Google Apps Script