Don’t have time to get to all your library duties? Need more staff? Create them using code! I work in a school library and could definitely do with some help around here, so let’s write some programs to streamline a few library duties and add some “virtual staff”.
In this post, we’ll create a small tool to help get word out to the school community about book recommendations and new releases/purchases in the library. The plan is to make use of a Google Sheet to pre-populate a bunch of data as time goes on and then have a Google Apps Script pull that data periodically, display it on our digital displays using Google Slides as well as to send email updates to the community.
Nice example for creating Google Slides from Google Sheets for digital signage. The post has a useful explanation of what is going on in the code for those interested to learn more.
I use Google Apps Script to support staff and students in my job. I enjoy dabbling with creating tools to help with automation and I freely share my learning experiences on my blog, where I also have a number of useful Google Add-ons: www.pbainbridge.co.uk
Recently I raised a support ticket with a tech company I was subscribed to where we were trying to resolve an integration issue I had with their service. Once we had it all resolved they followed up with a feedback form. That feedback form just happened to be a Google Form.
In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through accessing the prefill tool in Google Forms. Then, if you are keen on doing some coding, we’ll create a little custom feedback form for unique users that we will deliver via email.
Nice tutorial from Scott ‘Yagi’ Donald on using prefilled Google Form links. For beginners the post includes everything you need to know. For more experienced developers Scott includes some nice code for handling Google Sheet data.
Handy snippet from Andras Sztrokay to handle inline images when using Gmail draft messages as part of your script projects. As highlighted by Romain Vialard in the Google Apps Script community:
Google added the ability to easily retrieve the inline images in an existing draft via the getAttachments() method on October 30, 2018 (see Apps Script release notes)
This walkthrough will let you build a tracker for email opens using Gmail, Google Sheet, and Google Apps Script.
Interesting solution that popped up in the Google Apps Script community for logging email opens using Google Apps Script. The post includes a detailed walkthrough for setting this up as well as some caveats about reliability.
“When was the last time this sheet was uploaded?” Probably one of the biggest requests I get is how do I add a timestamp to check when some particular range was changed. Well, [here] is a simple function you can add to your Google Sheets doc to add the formula LASTEDIT()
The question of recording when a cell/range has been edited has landed in my inbox before. I’ve not tested this solution myself but from the scan of the script worth noting that this solution will only work on one cell array per Google Sheet, so some modification might be required if you have more than one range you’d like to monitor.
This post shows how to setup Libraries in Google Apps Scripts to share code and functions. We will use this while using Slack for logging.
Nice post from Matt “Rudy” Benton on using libraries in your Apps Script projects to make it easier to share code/credentials. Matt illustrates this with a Slack app that has also been documented.
This is a sample script for setting alternate background colors for rows in Google Spreadsheet using Google Apps Script.
It has already been known when the conditional formatting rule and custom function are used, this can be simply achieved. In this report, I would like to introduce the method for using Google Apps Script.
Andy Rundquist has created (and released as open source!) a synchronous class dashboard built entirely out of Apps Script.
As my school went mostly online last spring, I started collecting my thoughts about what I really wish I had for an online platform to work with my students. I quickly realized that my dream of all videos on and fully interactive students 1) wasn’t as good as I thought, and 2) didn’t happen because many students couldn’t or wouldn’t make use of video. I began to realize that video is the dominant feature in things like Zoom and Google Meets. It gobbles up nearly all of the screen space and is responsible for nearly all the bandwidth. So I started to consider what I might be able to do if I just stopped using video.
So I set out looking for ways to build in collaborative tools like whiteboards and understanding checks that would make better use of screen space. This is the result.
I’m a public school teacher writing Apps Script projects to manage documentation and to make life easier in general. You can read more on my blog, blog.ohheybrian.com or follow me on Twitter, @bennettscience.
The File Upload feature of Google Forms lets you receive files from form respondents directly in your Google Drive. You may add the File Upload question in your Google Form to receive PDF assignments from students, résumé applications, portfolio images from contestants, and so on.
When a respondent uploads a file through Google Forms, the file are stored in a fixed folder of your Google Drive. All files are uploaded in the same folder and, thus looking at the file in your Google Drive, it is difficult to determine which respondent has uploaded which set of files.
Learn how to organize file uploads and attachments from Google Forms and move files to a specific folder in Google Drive.
