Talking CRMs, Databases, and how to ditch them; this time within the Lead Generation domain. Bonus: pitfalls of a 90s computing mindset! 😅
Previously on Pulse we shared Rafael Romo Mulas’ post, Tech Recruiter Tries Coding. Rafael has recently published part 2 in which they highlight their journey into VS Code, clasp and TypeScript. If you are unfamiliar with TypeScript its a language which transpiles into JavaScript and basically designed to help you write better code. Rafael notes:
… the main difference is you are forced to be more precise, which avoids running into stupid errors! Therefore, to my surprise, it is actually easier to code in TypeScript than JavaScript, even more so for a beginner like me, because:
There is not much to “unlearn” from JS, if you just started anyway.
You’re alerted when values can be of a type that would cause errors.
You’re forced to do something about it, basically debugging in advance.
You can read more about Rafael’s journey in the linked article
Learn the origin story of a solopreneur, Scott and how he built Yagisanatode over the past 5 years. …
“We had just started the second semester of a university course that I was instructing on and my operations director pulled me out of my first class for the semester within an hour and asked me to teach the advanced course. I lasted a day…”
Continuing on from yesterday’s theme of ‘code zero’ to ‘code hero’ here is another origin story this time from Scott Donald. The EDU sector is a rich vein when it comes to producing ‘noisy’ Google Apps Script developers. There are probably a number of reasons why this sector produces so many of the most impactful community contributors. Education, particularly assessment, is so admin intensive it’s maybe not that surprising that stories similar to Scott’s are quite common, but perhaps the biggest factor is educators like to educate!
After years of working adjacent to software development, first in sales and then in recruitment, I abruptly decided to take the plunge into the other side, and start coding to automate or speed up tasks of my everyday job.
The idea came by when I started using Google Sheets more heavily, and realized how powerful it is by itself, and how much more it can become with the addition of Google Apps Script, which I discovered to my surprise is actually modern JavaScript.
Sharing this post as hopefully it’s encouragement if you are new or a beginner to Google Apps Script that with some time and effort you can begin building your custom solutions in Google Workspace. Also, if nothing else it’s all a great reminder that you can quickly enhance your UI with Unicode characters:
I’ve been running this site for about 12 years ago. with over 1000 pages of content, here’s some of the high (and low) lights. I came to Apps Script not long after it was available, my first foray into it was probably around 2010, and I started writing about it not long afterwards.
I’m sure many Google Workspace developers are familiar with the work of Bruce Mcpherson. Regardless of whether or not you have, this is a nice summary of the last 12+ years of work published by Bruce last year but well worth revisiting. It covers everything from his move from VBA to focus on Apps Script, useful script libraries and code as well as explorations into other Google Cloud products.
Google Workspace Admins is an IT admin driven series of live and pre-recorded technical talks covering any and all topics that a Google Workspace Admin would find useful. We’ll cover topics that would benefit the Tier 1 IT help desk admin on up to the super admin and the CIO. Signup to get invited to all future events.
I’ve been a Google Workspace Admin for over a decade, mostly working on small domains. More recently my role requires me to support larger domains, often with enhanced security needs and the requirement to generally do everything on a bigger scale. This is where tools like GAM and Google Apps Script become essential to help with the heavy lifting.
Broadening the range of Google Workspace domains I support has also required me to broaden the channels and communities where I can learn and keep up-to-date. Recently, I was pointed to the Google Workspace Admins YouTube channel. Whilst this channel is relatively new it’s bursting with a wide range of technical focused solutions and discussions. Follow the link to subscribe to the channel and there is a form to get invited to all future events.
Since Google Apps Script was released on August 19th, 2009, it is used by a lot of users. By this, now there are a lot of useful libraries of Google Apps Script (GAS) in all over the world. But when I want to search a GAS library, I always use Google search engine. Unfortunately, in the current stage, the libraries cannot be directly searched by a database. On January 11th, 2020, a proposal for the database of Google Apps Script Library has been proposed by Andrew Roberts. When I have discussing about this with him, I thought that I tried to think of a sample database. So I prepared this…
Google Apps Script turns 13 years old today and in celebration we are highlighting this combined community contribution. As you will see from the source repo commit history this searchable database of Google Apps Script libraries has been around for a while, but given what it represents we thought worth celebrating.
Build an extension that adds new powers to Coda docs for a chance at $20,000 in prizes.
In my opinion Apps Script is a somewhat undervalued skill. So much of the world runs on spreadsheets, and many of those sheets are glued together using Apps Script. Well the good news is that your Apps Script skills are the perfect fit for a virtual hackathon running now: the Coda Packathon.
Coda is a new kind of doc, built for teams, sort of like a cross between Sheets, Docs, and Sites. Instead of a scripting language Coda includes Packs, a simple plugin mechanism that lets you enhance the core features of the doc. We just launched the platform, and to celebrate we’re running a six-week virtual hackathon to see who can build the best Packs.
Writing a Pack is a lot like writing an Apps Script:
You can create a Pack from start to finish in your browser (use pack.new)
Packs are written using JavaScript (technically TypeScript, but you don’t need to use types)
Packs can be used to add a custom formula, sync data into a table, update a record in an API.
You can learn more about the Packathon and register here: coda.devpost.com.
In this episode of Google Workspace Add On Walkthroughs (GWAOw!), we take a look at ImportFromWeb by NoDataNoBusiness.
ImportFromWeb is a powerful web scraping tool for Google Sheets that allows you to grab data from any website. The creators call it IMPORTXML on steroids.
The latest episode from Scott Donald’s GWAOw! is now available. As explained by Scott ImportFromWeb is a Google Sheets add-on which allows users to use the custom function to import data from other websites into Google Sheets.
Even though this add-on is primarily used to add a custom function to Google Sheets the developers, NoDataNoBusiness, have taken the time to use the sidebar with some useful UI elements to help users get started.
Master the QUERY function, the most powerful function in Google Sheets, to become a more effective data analyst
Friend of Pulse and Google Sheets guru, Ben Collins, has a new course ‘The QUERY Function in Google Sheets’. The QUERY function it lets you perform various data manipulations making it easy to reshape, aggregate and explore your data in Google Sheets. The course is designed to be suitable for everyone from beginner to advanced who are interested in ways to work more effectively with your data.
If you are not familiar with the QUERY function Ben provides one example of what is possible in Sheets Tip 204: How To Use Dates In The QUERY Function (check the linked post in this Sheet Tip for an example worksheet).
Bonus:Sheets Tip 204 includes a 50% discount on the course valid until Friday 20 May 2022 at midnight EDT.
Finally, if you are interested in using the QUERY language in Google Apps Script it is possible! Below is some code used in this copy of Ben’s example workbook based on:
// based on https://gist.github.com/tanaikech/053d3ebbe76fa7c0b5e80ea9d6396011#sample-script
function myFunction() {
const doc = SpreadsheetApp.getActive()
const spreadsheetId = doc.getId(); // or set another Spreadsheet ID.
const sheetId = doc.getSheetByName('Data').getSheetId(); // or set another Sheet ID from Spreadsheet ID.
const query = "select C, B where B > date '2000-01-01' and B <= date '2002-12-31'"; // your QUERY
const url = `https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/${spreadsheetId}/gviz/tq?tqx=out:csv&gid=${sheetId}&tq=${encodeURI(query)}&access_token=${ScriptApp.getOAuthToken()}`;
const res = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url,);
console.log(res.getContentText());
const array = Utilities.parseCsv(res.getContentText());
console.log(array);
// SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet(); // This comment line is put for automatically detecting the scopes if directly adding a spreadsheet ID.
}
GWAOw! is a YouTube series that explores the best Google Workspace Add Ons in the Google Marketplace to help you learn what is out there.
This new YouTube series from Scott Donald at yagisanatode.com will hopefully be a great way to see and learn how other developers have implemented Google Workspace Add-ons, picking up UI tips and tricks. For the first episode Scott takes a look at Workbook Statistics by Sourabh Choraria. Scott is planning one/two episodes a month and if you have published your own add-ons you can find out about getting it featured in GWAOw!.
