AppsScriptPulse

Solutions, Sheets, Web App, Intermediate

Creating dining reservation system with Google Apps Script

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Google Apps Script automates tasks (even offline) and builds web apps using spreadsheets as databases. This report presents a basic dining reservation system to illustrate key aspects of web app development with Apps Script, HTML, and Javascript.

One of my first Google Apps Script projects was an event booking system. It was a great way to learn about integrating with the various services like Google Calendar. Roll forward 14 years and it is a topic that Kanshi Tanaike has revisited with a dining reservation system built on Google Sheets with a web app frontend.

All the code is published on GitHub and even if you don’t need a reservation system a great opportunity to see how one can be coded and there could be lots of juicy little snippets that you can use in your own projects.

Source: Creating Dining Reservation System using Google Apps Script

Solutions, Drive, Sheets, Intermediate

How to audit Google Shared Drive permissions in Google Sheets with Apps Script

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Are you looking for an efficient way to get an overview of all shared drives and their access permissions within your organization? Whether you’re navigating a company reorganization or implementing security procedures, accessing this information can be challenging.

This post from Niek Waarbroek highlights the important of auditing Google Shared Drive permissions. This can be a challenge to do using the Google Workspace Admin Console, especially if you have lots of Shared Drives.

To help Niek has shared a Google Sheet with Apps Script code that automatically generates a list of all shared drives and their associated root level permissions.

Shared Drive auditing is bit of a niche subject, but I encourage you to have a look at the post and script as it has some nice features which could be applicable to other projects. For example, there is a gaspTimeManager to make sure the script doesn’t go beyond the script execution limit.

Source: How to audit shared drive permissions in Google Drive

Add-on, Gotchas, Intermediate

🔒Preventing Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) in Google Apps Script Dialogs and Sidebars 

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If you are looking to publish a Google Workspace Editor Add-on, you may need to consider upping your security with an anti-CSRF token.

Scott Donald has shared some really useful information about protecting your Google Workspace and Apps Script data from malicious websites using anti-CSRF tokens. Google is currently in the process of reviewing Google Workspace Add-ons which means for many restricted scopes in Google Drive developers need to complete CASA Tier 2 security assessments, which require anti-CSRF token.

For more context CSRF attacks are a type of cyberattack that can allow hackers to trick your browser into sending unwanted requests from your account, such as making purchases or changing your settings. This can put your data and privacy at risk.

Anti-CSRF tokens are a simple but effective way to prevent these attacks. They work by generating a unique ID for each user session, which is then included in all requests sent to Google Workspace and Apps Script. This way, the server can verify that the request is legitimate before processing it.

Implementing anti-CSRF protection is relatively easy and this tutorial from Scott explains have you can implement it in your Google Workspace Editor Add-on.

Source: Preventing Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) in Google Apps Script Dialogs and Sidebars – Yagisanatode

Solutions, Cloud Storage, Drive, Intermediate

Managing Google Cloud Storage files with Google Apps Script without using a service account

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Using Google Apps Script scoped authentication to interact with Google Cloud resources without a service account

A key feature of Google Apps Script is its integration into Google Cloud. The default behaviour when any Apps Script project is created is that an associated Google Cloud project is created and configured. This default project is not accessible to the user and for most scripts, the user doesn’t need to worry about any of the configurations such as enabling APIs and configuring authentication settings.

Other key aspects are identity and authentication. The default behaviour for scripts is usually to run as the account executing the script, Apps Script automatically determining what authorisation is required for different Google services based on an automatic scan of your code or from what scopes have been set explicitly in the Apps Script manifest file.

The last piece in the puzzle is the .getOAuthToken() method which is part of the ScriptApp Service:

Gets the OAuth 2.0 access token for the effective user. … The token returned by this method only includes scopes that the script currently needs. Scopes that were previously authorized but are no longer used by the script are not included in the returned token. If additional OAuth scopes are needed beyond what the script itself requires, they can be specified in the script’s manifest file.

What this means is in script projects we can borrow an access token to use other services that the effective user has access to and have been declared in the script project scopes. For example, if my Google account [email protected] has been added to another Google Cloud project with the Google Cloud Storage service enabled, I can use Apps Script to generate a token to use the Cloud Storage service in that project.

To help illustrate this, here are two examples for interacting with Google Cloud Storage buckets to upload and download files to Google Drive.

Source: Managing Google Cloud Storage files with Google Apps Script without using a service account

Add-on, Library, Drive, Intermediate

ReDriveApp: A new Google Apps Script library to replace DriveApp and restricted scopes 

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Apps Script class that provides equivalent methods offered by the built-in DriveApp, but that does not require use of full ‘/drive’ OAuth scope (which is a “Restricted” scope”). Instead, uses only these Recommended (non-sensitive) and/or Sensitive scopes

When you use OAuth 2.0 to get permission from a Google Account to access their data, you use strings called scopes to specify the type of data you want to access on their behalf. For Google Workspace Add-on developers wanting to distribute your app in the Google Workspace Marketplace one consideration is only using the scopes required for your app. In the case of Google Drive a number of the scopes are classified by Google as “restricted”. To use “restricted” scopes there is an enhanced verification process, which requires Cloud Application Security Assessment (CASA) by an independent security assessor, which come at a cost and can be time consuming.

ReDriveApp is a new Apps Script community library published by Dave Abouav which makes it easier for developers to use reduced recommended scopes for integrating with Google Drive. As explained by Dave:

The built-in DriveApp service is an easy and powerful way to interact with Google Drive in your Google Apps Script projects, which is why so many developers make use of it. It’s one downside is that it forces your project to use the full ‘/drive’ OAuth scope, which is a “Restricted” scope.

In many cases though, projects don’t really need the full /drive scope for common tasks, and the Recommended /drive.file scope is sufficient. This allows your project to create new files, and open existing files if authorized by the end-user via the Drive Picker. Using it also avoids the aforementioned security review, and is less alarming to users when authorizing your app.

ReDriveApp is still work-in-progress and not an official Google project. There are a number of methods that still need to be implemented, but the project is open source and can be contributed to on GitHub. If you are planning or have already developed a Marketplace Add-on that has stalled due to enhanced verification for restricted scopes it could be worth looking at and contributing to this library.

Source: GitHub – ReDriveApp

Library, Solutions, Intermediate

FetchApp: Open-source Google Apps Script library to enhance UrlFetchApp

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Google Apps Script is often used to pull data from various services via HTTP requests. However, these requests sometimes fail due to network or service issues. The default behavior of UrlFetchApp is to throw an exception, which you have to catch. Otherwise, the script execution will be interrupted. We often need more: send the request again instead of failing. There is no built-in way to do retries in Apps Script. Solution – To solve this problem and not copy-and-paste code snippets from project to project, I created FetchApp – an open-source Google Apps Script library

This looks like a useful little library which puts a nice wrapper around the UrlFetchApp service. The wrapper includes options for: retries, delays (including exponential backoff), custom callbacks, code hints and automatic logging. The supporting post includes lots of documented code snippets for using the library which should make it easier to implement. A very handy drop in replacement if you are having to communicate with more sensitive API endpoints. The code is also on Github if you want to take a look at how the library is coded.

Source: FetchApp: UrlFetchApp with Retries

Solutions, AI, Drive, Vertex AI, Intermediate

How to automatically rename files in Google Drive with Apps Script and the Vertex AI Gemini API

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Quickly rename files in Google Drive with Apps Script and Google Gemini AI. The script will automatically rename the files with a descriptive name based on the image content.

Amit Agarwal is celebrating 20 years of ‘Digital Inspiration’, one of my go to resources for Google Workspace tech tips, tutorials and how-to guides. This recent post from Amit is a great example of the types of solutions he regularly shares. This time Amit is looking at how the Generative AI capabilities of the Gemini API can be used to help rename images in Google Drive. To achieve this there Amit shares handy Apps Script snippets for finding images in a Google Drive folder, grabbing the thumbnail images as Base64 encoded strings before calling the Gemini Pro Vision API to get suggested filenames with the prompt:

Analyze the image content and propose a concise, descriptive filename in 5-15 words without providing any explanation or additional text. Use spaces instead of underscores.

For this solution an API key for Gemini Pro Vision is generated in Google AI Studio (formerly MakerSuite). There are still geographic restrictions on access to Google AI Studio, but given Apps Script runs on Google servers once you have a API key you can continue to use it without having to proxy a location.

Image credit: Amit Agarwal

Adding image capabilities to the GeminiApp Apps Script library has been on my TODO. Now I’ve got an example to play with it should be easier to do .. thank you Amit Agarwal.

Source: How to Automatically Rename Files in Google Drive with Apps Script and AI – Digital Inspiration

Add-on, Solutions, Intermediate

Creating a usage dashboard for your Google Workspace Marketplace Add-on with LookerStudio, BigQuery and Logging Sinks

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Flubaroo Add-on Dashboard

At the moment, Add-ons in Google Workspace offer only basic usage analytics via the Workspace Marketplace SDK. These include install data broken out by domains and seats (for Add-ons installed by Workspace admins), and individual end-user installs. This is useful information, but doesn’t tell you much about who is actively using your Add-on, nor give you the ability to breakdown that usage by different dimensions.

The code and instructions in this repo will help you gather and visualize Add-on usage data, such as active usage of your Add-on broken out by user characteristics. It also shows you how to log specific events that correspond to use you want to track (i.e. new installs, uses of particular features, etc).

Here’s a useful solution for Google Workspace Add-on developers who would like more actionable insight into their Google Workspace Add-on usage. This isn’t an official Google solution but comes from the creator of the very popular Flubaroo add-on, Dave Abouav.

The solution includes a Google Apps Script helper snippet which enables your add-on to ‘call home’, or in this case into Cloud Logging, with basic user metrics as well as other events you would like to log. The project also details how you can route usage logs from Cloud Logging into BigQuery by creating a ‘sink’ in Google Cloud Log Router.

The final step is creating a LookerStudio dashboard to visualise the BigQuery data. As noted by Dave there is a cost to using BigQuery for long term storage and querying, which should be kept in mind. More details in the source link below.

H/T to Chanel Greco for highlighting this solution.

Source: Instructions for creating a usage dashboard for your Google Workspace Add-on

Solutions, Sheets, Intermediate

How to write Google Apps Script logs into Google Sheets

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In Google Apps Script, the ability to track and record actions, errors, and performance metrics is crucial for both developers and users. However, the built-in logging mechanisms often fall short regarding accessibility and ease of use. This is where Local Google Apps Script Logging comes into play, offering a streamlined and integrated approach to capturing script activities.

Google Apps Script has a couple of logging options, including the native Apps Script execution log, to setting up a Cloud Developer Console project and using Cloud Logging and Error Reporting.  There are a couple of alternative Apps Script logging solutions out there, like Peter Herrmann’s BetterLog. Here’s the latest alternative Apps Script logging solution from Dimitris Paxinos called LocalLogger.

LocalLogger has some nice features including built-in severity colour coding and customisable email notifications. Even if you don’t need a alternative logging solution the code is well structured and includes a way to mimic an Enum list. You can find all the code and a video explaining LocalLogger via the source link 👇🏻

Source: How to write Google Apps Script logs into Google Sheets

Solutions, BigQuery, Calendar, Intermediate

Ghislain Sanjuan on LinkedIn: Google Admin and the raiders of the lost calendar (combining Google Workspace BigQuery logs and Apps Script)

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#GoogleCalendar gave me a funny adventure !

Here’s a fun and useful take from Ghislain Sanjuan explaining how you can restore deleted calendar events using Google Apps Script. To restore the events data is used from BigQuery Workspace Logs. For those unfamiliar Google Workspace Admins on supported editions of Workspace can setup a streaming export of activity data to BigQuery. This can be incredibly useful in situations where you need to review audit and usage data and in this scenario use it to restore data.

Source: Ghislain Sanjuan on LinkedIn: Google Admin and the raiders of the lost calendar