AppsScriptPulse

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BeginnerFormsSheetsSolutionsV8

Create a book tracker using Apps Script and the Google Books API in 10 minutes

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I wanted a quick and easy way for my kids to track the books they read, as well as a way for my wife to catalog all the books in the house. I know there are other services out there like Goodreads that can store your book list…but I just wanted to house the data myself, and not have to create accounts for my young kids.

Nice little project that glues together Google Forms and Sheets and the Google Book API with a little but of Google Apps Script. Follow the link for more information and the source code.

Source: Create a book tracker using Apps Script and the Google Books API in 10 minutes

FormsIntermediateOfficial NewsSolutions

Announcing the Google Forms API

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Google is proud to announce the Google Forms API! The Forms API is currently available in Restricted Beta, with Open Beta expected to follow in Q4. … The new Google Forms API provides programmatic access for managing forms and acting on responses, empowering developers to build powerful integrations on top of Forms.

The Forms API is currently in Restricted Beta. We encourage you to apply here to be an early adopter to get started with the API today! We’ll also send you important updates about Open Beta and improvements to the API. To keep up to date with all the APIs of your favorite Google Apps, please subscribe to the Google Workspace Developer Newsletter.

On Totally Unscripted we were delighted to have Christian Schalk (Developer Advocate, Google) and Hannah Pho (Software Engineer, Google) as well as early Forms API partners Charles Kemp (Strategic Alliances Manager, Zapier) and Charles Wiles (CEO, Zzish), talk about the new Forms API. A recording of the show is on YouTube and show notes will soon be added to the Totally Unscripted website.

Source: Announcing the Google Forms API

BeginnerDriveSheetsSolutions

Bulk convert Google Docs to PDFs 2.0

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Bulk convert all the Google Docs within a given folder to PDFs and optionally delete the Docs afterward, version 2.0

The following Google Apps Script tool is designed to bulk convert all Google Docs within a given Google Drive folder into PDFs. You can choose the destination folder for the PDFs to be put into and also whether you want the original Docs to be deleted. This tool does work on Shared drives.

It is an improved version of this Google Doc to PDF tool post.

Improvements / Features

  1. Maximum runtime – in order to prevent the tool from reaching the limits imposed by Google you can adjust the number of minutes the tool can run for. Change this in the ‘GlobalVariables.gs’ file in the Script Editor.
  2. Continue from where it left off – if you have a lot of Google Docs to convert and the above runtime is reached the tool will save its progress and prompt you to run it again, avoiding any file duplication.
  3. HTML popup – as well as the ‘Log’ sheet the tool now displays a direct popup to the user if it encounters a problem.
  4. PDF counter – after successfully running the tool will include the number of PDFs created as part of the success popup to the user.

Source: The Gift of Script: Bulk convert Google Docs to PDFs 2.0

BeginnerClassroomSheetsSolutionsV8

Create Google Classrooms using Google Apps Script

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Creating a Google Classroom and maintaining it can be a bit hectic for so many students in a school. Say you are the moderator of your school and your task is to create 10 Google Classrooms for different teachers. Manually doing this can be a very hectic process, that’s where Google Apps Script comes in.

Using Google Apps Script, you can automatically create Google Classroom with the data in the Google Sheet, and paste the Class code in the Google Sheet.

Source: Create Google Classrooms using Google Apps Script

GotchasIntermediateSolutionsV8

Executing Function with Minutes timer in Specific Times using Google Apps Script [and tips on creating triggers in V8]

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This is a sample script for executing a function with the minutes timer in the specific times using Google Apps Script. For example, when this sample script is used, the following situation can be achieved: Execute a function every 10 minutes only in 09:00 – 12:00 and 15:00 – 18:00 for the weekday.

A clever bit of coding from Kanshi Tanaike for running a Google Apps Script on a defined schedule. The part I found particularly interesting was the solution for programmatically setting triggers in the V8 runtime:

This sample script used Web Apps. Because when v8 runtime is used, when the trigger is set from the function executing by a trigger, the trigger is disabled. This is the recognized bug. But unfortunately, this has still not been resolved. (September 21, 2021) But, when the trigger is installed by Web Apps, no issue occurs. So, please deploy Web Apps.

For the sample code and explanation visit the source link.

Source: Executing Function with Minutes timer in Specific Times using Google Apps Script

IntermediateLibrarySolutionsV8

How to Make Your NPM Package Available in Google App Script

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Boboss74, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I recently came across GAS — Google App Script and immediately the first hurdle I had to overcome to was make my NPM packages available on there. I had to hop through a couple loops to make this happen. I wanted to call out the steps in this blog so it’ll hopefully help someone out there as well.

In Pulse we’ve previously highlighted a couple of approaches for using NPM libraries in Google Apps Script. The linked source post come from, recent guest on Totally Unscripted, Nima Poulad, Senior Software Engineer at DocuSign. Nima highlights a quick and dirty approach of using eval() on hosted NPM libraries, but goes on to show how Browseify can be used to convert NPM libraries, highlighting some considerations for this approach.

Source: How to Make Your NPM Package Available in Google App Script

IntermediateSheetsSolutionsV8

Multiple Sheets Action. Use Macro Recorder 🔴

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Image credit: Max Makhrov

The idea: perform the same action on multiple sheets. The idea is not new, my approach was to use macro each time to see the correct code snippet. It was useful and saved me hours on my current project.

A clever solution from Max Makhrov with some boilerplate script that makes it easy to use a recorded macro across multiple sheets. To make this solution even better I’ve suggested an addition which activates the sheet which makes it easier to reference recorded macro functions. To see in action here is a copy of Max’s Google Sheet with updated code.

Source: Multiple Sheets Action. Use Macro Recorder 🔴

GotchasIntermediateSolutions

How to call Google Cloud Run (or Cloud Functions) from Google Apps Scripts

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Image Credit: bigchanchai/Shutterstock

I struggled how to make an authenticated call from Apps Scripts to Cloud Run even though I had owner rights on the GCP project. This post describes how to do it without reinventing the wheel.

Some very useful setup tips for using Cloud Run with Google Apps Scripts including additional references if you are keen to explore more.

Source: How to call Google Cloud Run (or Cloud Functions) from Apps Scripts

BeginnerSolutionsV8

Improve Performance of Google Apps Script with Memoization – Digital Inspiration

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How to use JavaScript memoization to optimize and improve the performance of your Google Apps Script code. … Memoization is a simple optimization technique that can be used to improve the performance of your Google Apps Script code. The basic idea is that you cache the results of an expensive function call using closures. If the function is called again with the same arguments, the cached result is returned instead of calling and executing the function all over again.

Great tip from Amit Agarwal for improving the performance of data heavy functions. Follow the link to the source post to find out more and a code sample to get started that finds a particular value in a CSV file.

Source: Improve Performance of Google Apps Script with Memoization – Digital Inspiration

AdvancedSolutions

How to management deployments to Google App Script from clasp with a Github Action

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This repository is an example of how to setup an automatic CI/CD process for Google Apps Script using GitHub Actions.

This solution come via Dimitri S on Twitter and provides a way to setup a continuous development workflow for Google Apps Script using clasp and Github. The basic recipe appears to be is you develop your code locally using your preferred IDE. You then use clasp to push your code to GitHub, which triggers a GitHub Action to deploy your code to script.google.com.

Source: GitHub – ericanastas/deploy-google-app-script-action