There may be times when you want to present different content in your add-on’s homepage depending on certain conditions.
For example, I want to present a card to the user when they run my add-on for the first time (I’ll call it ‘card-A’), but present a different card for each subsequent time the add-on is run (‘card-B’).
Whilst this post from Clark Lind focuses on Gmail add-ons the code snippet could be used for other Google Workspace Add-ons for Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides that use the Card Service.
This is a report for obtaining the values from GOOGLEFINANCE using Google Apps Script. When I tested to retrieve the values from GOOGLEFINANCE function on Google Spreadsheet using Google Apps Script, I noticed that the values can be retrieved.
Another interesting report from Kanshi Tanaike where they test the ability to get values from the Google Sheets GOOGLEFINANCE function with Google Apps Script. For context, as highlighted in the report, Google announced in 2016 that historical data from the GOOGLEFINANCE function would no longer be accessible using either Google Apps Script or the Google Sheets API.
The 2016 announcement followed news in 2014 that the Finance Service, which allowed direct access to current and historical stock data, was deprecated (if you are interested in seeing what you are missing out on here is the Internet Archive snapshot of Finance Service from 2013).
So clearly there is a trend here in Google not wanting you to programmatically access stock data with their services and I anticipate the GOOGLEFINANCE function will be updated to prevent access from Google Apps Script, but in the meantime you can have some fun :)
Learn how to setup a video meeting inside Google Meet with the Google Calendar API and Apps Script. This Apps Script sample shows how you can programmatically schedule video meetings inside Google Meet with one or more participants using the Google Calendar API. It can be useful for teachers who wish to schedule regular meetings with their students but instead of manually creating meeting invites, they can easily automate the whole process for the entire class.
We’ve featured a couple of Google Meet scheduling solutions in Pulse[1,2]. This latest example from Amit Agarwal includes some nice code examples for additional optional parameters that can be used when using Google Calendar as an Advanced Service (Calendar.Events.insert). These include:
attendees[].responseStatus – for setting the attendee’s response status;
reminders.overrides[] – to override default event reminders and pops; and
recurrence[] – creating a custom recurrence for the calendar event
Amit includes some very useful examples of recurrence rules, using the RRULE notation. As well as RRULE the recurrence property can also accept RDATE and EXDATE values for further occurrence customisation.
One the powerful features of Google Apps Script is with a couple of lines of code you can quickly start automating and organising your inbox. For people just getting started with Apps Script Google provide a introductory codelab ‘Accessing Google Sheets, Maps, and Gmail in 4 lines of code!’ and for those wanting to do a bit more the Google Workspace Developer documentation includes a ‘create a mail merge‘ solution.
Mail merge solutions are bit or a reoccurring theme in the world of Google Apps Script. In 2011 the official G Suite Developers Blog featured 4 ways to do Mail Merge using Google Apps Script with community contributions from James Ferreira, Steve Webster and Romain Vialard. The post references Romain’s ‘Yet another Mail Merge’ script, which he went on to develop as a very successful YAMM add-on before refocusing on the Mergo Mail Merge. Even further back when Google Apps Script was officially launched in 2009 this included a introductory video with a mail merge example.
A well as Google official channels the ability to automate your Gmail inbox has regularly caught the attention of the wider tech press. In 2013, Computerworld highlighted Jonathan Kim’s ‘Gmail No Response’ script which goes through your inbox and finds recent emails where you were the last respondent. Jonathan’s blog post is no longer available but the Gmail No Response’ script is on GitHub where it has been forked 100 times.
runs through the emails in your inbox and checks your outgoing messages for a question mark. Once it finds these emails it checks to see if they are in a date range and then sees if you have had a response. If you have not had a reply to your email containing a “?” then it adds the label “No Response”. You can then quickly see all of the threads for which you are awaiting a reply.
If you are interested in more Gmail script solutions then I highly recommend you have a look at content shared by Amit Agarwal. This doesn’t just include Apps Script solutions but also a number of Gmail tips and tricks. As many of these feature the way you can search your Gmail inbox they can also be used with GmailApp.search() or if using the Gmail Advanced Service Gmail.Users.Messages.list. A nice example of where a Gmail user tip can be used in Apps Script is Amit’s post which includes how to Search Emails by Specific Time in Gmail.
In this blog, I am going to show you how to create a To-Do list app using Google AppSheet. A To-do list app lets you write organize and prioritize your tasks more efficiently. In this blog, we will be creating a To-Do list app using Google AppSheet that will allow you to do the same. Additionally, we will be using the automation features in Google AppSheet to send an email as soon a task is completed.
Aryan has written a great tutorial on how to get started and takes us through how we can connect Google Sheets to AppsSheet and how to create a simple to-do list app from it.
I’ve been using Apps Script since 2015 and absolutely love it. I share various projects and ideas on my site bazroberts.com and I have also written a number of books on Apps Script, taking people through step-by-step from the very basics to more complex areas whilst making practical applications. I also share news on Apps Script and on Google Workspace in general on Twitter @barrielroberts
According to Wikipedia, the Game of Life “is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970.”
It begins on a two-dimensional grid of square cells. Each cell can be either alive or dead. Every cell interacts with its eight immediate neighbors. A live cell only remains alive if it has two or three living neighbors. If it has fewer than two living neighbors, it dies as if by underpopulation. Conversely, if it has more than three, it dies as if by overpopulation. A dead cell remains dead unless it has exactly three living neighbors; otherwise, it becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.
There is no immediate practical use for the Game of Life in a spreadsheet; however, it is a fun algorithmic challenge. Moreover, Google Sheets natively provides us with the perfect data structure: a two-dimensional array. This is all the more reason to work on those array skills!
Iterate through a Google Drive folder of Microsoft Excel files and convert them into individual Google Sheet files.
Bulk convert Excel files to Google Sheets
The following Google Apps Script is designed to iterate through a Google Drive folder of Microsoft Excel files and convert them all to individual Google Sheet files.
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
Working with dates, times and time zones can often be a bit of a headache. If you’d like to learn more about some of the challenges of dealing with ‘big balls of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff’ I recommend watching Comptuerphile’s Problem with Time & Timezones.
For displaying dates/time values for users in different time zones you can use Utilities.formatDate(date, timeZone, format), the challenge however is working out the user’s timeZone. For Google Workspace Add-ons developers can configure the manifest option to include user locale information in event objects included as part of action callback functions [See Accessing user locale and timezone].
function getUserTimeZone() {
var userTimeZone = CalendarApp.getDefaultCalendar().getTimeZone();
Logger.log(userTimeZone)
}
The downside of this approach is it potentially adds an additional authorisation scope the user will need to approve before the script can run. As noted by Google best practice is always to limit the scopes in your Apps Script projects to the ones you need.
If you’ve got other tips for handling user time zones feel free to pop them in the comments.
Use Apps Script to normalize your tweet data into tabular format for easy visualization & analysis.
I’ve a personal interest in Twitter data, in particular, how it can be collected analysed in Google Sheets so it was nice to see this example from Nick Young (@techupover). The solution shared by Nick uses Google Apps Script to parse a downloaded archive from a Twitter account and write it to a Google Sheet. A nice weekend project if you are looking for something to do :)
You use Google Sheets as your own Podcast Manager that will automatically download your favorite podcasts to Google Drive and instantly sync across all your devices.
Amit Agarwal is always coming up with creative uses for Google Apps Script. His latest project is a great example of what can be achieved with a little code and a lot of know-how. Even if you aren’t a podcast fan this project is worth checking out as Amit is expert at writing concise and efficient code.
Some highlights to check out once you make a copy of the ‘Podcast Manager’ Google Sheet are use of CacheService for getting/putting a last update time and using the .filter(Boolean) trick for ignoring blank cells when using .getValues() on Google Sheets data. There is plenty more going on and worth spending some time using the Script Editor debugger and breakpoints to learn from a master.
