AppsScriptPulse

How to send personalized text messages from Google Sheets (and make user friendly add-ons)

The Document Studio add-on helps you automatically send text messages when a new Google Form is submitted or when new rows are added to Google Sheets. You can thus build workflows that send text reminders when the invoices are due. Or you can get notified instantly when people fill out your Google Forms.

There was some speculation this week about how much revenue Amit Agarwal (Digital Inspiration) makes through his suite of Google Workspace Add-ons. I can neither confirm or deny the reported figures, but what I’m certain of is Amit is not only an expert developer but also clearly very talented at spotting opportunities and creating very slick user experiences.

This latest post from Amit is a case in point. No code, but plenty of screenshots demonstrating how users of his Document Studio add-on can integrate a SMS text service into Google Forms/Sheets. As this is achieved with a Webhook integration users aren’t limited to SMS services. Click through to the source link to see more screenshots similar to the one below:

Source: How to Send Personalized Text Messages from Google Sheets – Digital Inspiration

Creating a custom workflows using Google Forms and Google Sheets for provisioning virtual machines (VM) in Google Cloud

Is it possible to integrate Google Workspace tools such as Calendar, Sheets, and Forms with Workflows? For example, can you trigger a workflow from a Google Form or a Sheet? Turns out, this is not only possible but also easier than you might think. Let me show you how with a sample use case.

One of the great things about Google Workspace is there is never ‘one’ solution, there is enough flexibility for you to implement one of many workflows. A case in point is this post highlighting a Google Forms/Sheets powered approval system for allocating virtual machines (VM) to your users. As part of this the workflow includes calling the Compute Engine API to create the VM in Google Cloud.

Source: Triggering Workflows from Google Sheets

AppSheet/PayPal integrated payment solutions and tips on handling data in Google Sheets

In this post I’ll provide an overview of how PayPal was integrated into AppSheet with the help of Google Apps Script. Even if you are not interested in payment integrations this post also hopefully pulls together useful tips, best practices and code patterns for reading/writing data to Google Sheets.

Hopefully this post illustrates not only just a method for integrating a PayPal payment processor into an AppSheet app, but also a method which can generally be used to extend AppSheet functionality with Google Apps Script powered Web Apps.

As a bonus you also get some of my top tips for interacting with data in Google Sheets including efficiently reading/writing data for multiple users without concurrent overwrites.

Source: AppSheet/PayPal integrated payment solutions and tips on handling data in Google Sheets

Search Google Drive for ‘Shared with me’ with Google Apps Script

Search Google Drive for all of the files found in the Shared with me space and collate the results into a Google Sheet.

Search Google Drive 'Shared with me' and collate the results

Search Google Drive ‘Shared with me’ and collate the results

It will collate the following information into a Google Sheet:

  • The file name as a direct clickable link,
  • The file ID,
  • The type of file eg PDF, Google Sheet/Doc,
  • The file creation date,
  • The file last updated date,
  • The folder path,
  • The file owner.

Source: The Gift of Script: Search Google Drive for Shared with me

📮`MMailApp` for Google Apps Script: GmailApp+MailApp+Gmail API

The library lets you send emails, using MailApp, GmailApp, and Gmail API. The library takes care of parameters, so you do not need to care about which method to use. I had trouble with my project when I wanted to automatically send emails and suddenly for me we’ve reached the daily limit. This is why I’ve decided to make some research and be sure fewer bad things happen in the future.

If you are looking for a deep dive into Google Apps Script powered email sending options you are at the door of enlightenment. In this post from Max Makrov you not only to get an explanation of the options and benefits for sending email with MailApp, GmailApp and the Gmail API, but also a handy library, MmailApp. which makes it easy to switch between all three.

Source: 📮`MMailApp` for Google Apps Script: GmailApp+MailApp+Gmail API

Update Notion Databases from a Google Sheet (with Apps Script)

Phew — after two days of trying to find a solution for how to accomplish a popular, reasonable set of tasks in Notion’s API, I wanted to do my duties as a Google Developer Expert and blog the solution for others to use.

A familiar story for many developers is getting stuck on a problem. Max Brawer takes some time out to share how he solved a recent problem interacting with the Notion API with Google Apps Script. Max’s post includes lots of great tips for unpicking the steps required to get Apps Script talking to Notion.

Source: Update Notion Databases from a Google Sheet (with Apps Script)

Create a room availability dashboard for Google Workspace with onleetable and Apps Script

Make a Room availability dasboard for your Google Workspace domain wihtin a minute with onleetable and Google Apps Script

This post from Stéphane Giron caught my eye for a couple of reasons. Besides a quick and easy solution for displaying room availability in an attractive table as a bonus you can see/copy the script Stéphane uses to extract calendar data into a Google Sheet. Follow the source link for the code and more details.

Source: Create a room availability dashboard for Google Workspace with onleetable and Apps Script

Using OCR to convert large images to Google Docs with Google Apps Script (avoiding Request Too Large error)

When the image size, the image file size, the resolution of the image, and so on are large, an error like Request Too Large occurs. In this sample script, such the image can be converted to Google Document by reducing them.

Here is a workaround for converting large images to Google Docs from Kanshi Tanaike. The post includes a code snippet and link to related Stack Overflow Q&A. As noted in the SO discussion the solution might be a compromise for some developers as it reduces the image resolution being passed into Google Drive and if you need to keep the original quality you might have to look at other paid services.

Source: Converting Large images to Google Document by OCR using Google Apps Script

BAS#005 | Create a Google Slides presentation handout in Google Docs with Apps Script

Generate summary documents of your Google Presentations with thumbnails and speaker notes using Apps Script. In this BAS you will learn how to generate a summary text document with the thumbnails and notes obtained from the slides from a Google presentation. For this we will use the Apps Script services of Documents (mainly) and Presentations. Plus, you’ll do it efficiently thanks to the awesome UrlFetchApp.fetchAll() method.

If you don’t speak/read Spanish you’ll have to hit Google Translate to read this latest contribution from Pablo Felip. As described by Pablo: “Apps Script Basics (Básicos Apps Script – BAS, in Spanish) is a series of posts targeted to newcomers to Google Apps Script. Each BAS solves a simple, real-world problem, provides a thorough step-by-step break-down of the source code suitable for people who are learning how to leverage this platform and introduces key Apps Script patterns.”. This particular ‘Básicos Apps Script’ includes some useful information on building tables in Google Docs which could be useful in other contexts like generating reports.

Source: BAS#005 | Generating a presentation summary document with Apps Script

Rose Photo Manager – Bulk copy Google Photos to Google Drive

Rose Photo Manager - Bulk copy Google Photos to Google Drive

If you, like me, miss the automatic sync between Google Drive and Google Photos we lost in July 2019 (as Google thought we’d find it too complicated!) this is the GSheet for you. Rose Photo Manager copies the photos and videos from Google Photos and stores them onto your GDrive

This blog post describes how to set the supplied script to regularly copy your Google Photos from Google Drive (just like how it used to be done!). It builds on this post, but adds a load more features, one being keeping the photos in a GDrive folder with the same name as GPhoto albums that they belong to.

Source: Rose Photo Manager – Bulk Copy Google Photos to Google Drive