I tried to see if an AI that’s good at writing could also make smart moves in a game. I chose Battleship and set it up in Google Sheets to play against Gemini, the AI. The result was mixed. On one hand, yes, Gemini could play the game. It followed the basic rules and even managed to sink some of my ships. This was a big deal, especially since it took me a ridiculous number of days of coding to get there, and I nearly gave up at one point.
Dmitry Kostyuk has shared a blog post detailing his experiment pitting the Gemini API against himself in a game of Battleship. As explained by Dmitry while Gemini could follow the rules and even sink some ships, it needed help to avoid basic mistakes, revealing that AI still has room to grow in the realm of strategic games.
Dmitry built the game in Google Sheets and the source code is linked from the post. To guide Gemini, Kostyuk crafted detailed prompts outlining the game’s mechanics and decision-making logic. However, he encountered challenges due to Gemini’s limitations in providing strategic responses. Despite these hurdles, the project yielded valuable insights into prompting techniques for AI decision-making.
In this blog we are going to find out who exactly has access to my Google Drive files, be it a Google Sheet, Google Doc, Form and more. To do this we are going to be using the DriveApp and Google Apps Script.
Recently Aryan Irani shared this post which shows how you can get the file permissions on a Google Drive file using DriveApp. This uses the DriveApp methods for .getEditors()and .getViewers(), which left me wondering about commenters???
The answer is file commenters are included in the .getViewers() response and as pointed out by TheMaster you can filter out commenters with .getAccess().
Another approach is to use the Advanced Drive Service:
The advanced Drive service lets you use the Google Drive API in Apps Script. Much like Apps Script’s built-in Drive service, this API allows scripts to create, find, and modify files and folders in Google Drive. In most cases, the built-in service is easier to use, but this advanced service provides a few extra features, including access to custom file properties as well as revisions for files and folders.
Learning about the Advanced Drive Service can be useful as it open up more opportunities to interact with Google Drive content and can also help you get file properties.
In the case of permissions there is a dedicated Permissions Resource that allows access to all the file permissions. For example, if I wanted to see what accounts had access to a file in MyDrive you can use:
Using the Advanced Drive Service does require a step up in understanding how to call the Drive API and the response you get but once you begin understanding it can come with huge benefits with more efficient code.
The Slides Advisor project is an open source, Google Workspace Add-On that uses artificial intelligence (AI) technology to review and give feedback on your presentations, whenever you need it. The project uses Google’s Gemini API image and text processing features to analyze your Google Slides against a set of guidelines and lets you know how you are doing against those guidelines. Even better, you can customize those guidelines to follow your organization’s recommendations, or remind you to improve your presentations based on rules you define for yourself.
We’ve all been there: scrambling to cram too much information onto a single slide. But what if you had an AI assistant to give your presentations a once-over?
The Slides Advisor is a free, open-source Google Workspace Add-on for Google Slides that uses the power of AI to analyze your presentations. It checks your slides against customisable guidelines, helping you ensure they’re clear, concise, and visually appealing.
Everything you need to get started is covered in the source post by Joe Fernandez and Steve Bazyl. One of the highlights for me is seeing how you can setup a service account to access the Gemini AI API with Google Apps Script. The post also covers how you can modify the prompt you use to get different responses from Gemini.
Welcome to the Essential Apps Script course. This guide is designed so you can work through an introductory course in Google Apps Script, designed so you do not need any knowledge of coding to get started.
As part of our latest episode of Totally Unscripted we chatted to Phil Bainbridge about the work he does at the University of York supporting and creating Google Apps Script projects.
One of the resources the University has developed is the Essential Apps Script course which is designed to lead beginners through the first steps in learning Google Apps Script. The guide is shared under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA which allows anyone to reuse course materials for non-commercial use if shared with the same licence and attributing the University of York.
This course is a perfect starting point for both beginners and those tasked with helping others learn Google Apps Script. Its step-by-step approach and beginner-friendly language make it easy for anyone with no prior coding experience to grasp the fundamentals. For those supporting others, the course provides a clear and structured resource to guide colleagues through the process, saving valuable time and ensuring everyone is on the same page from the beginning.
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.
If you want to publish your Google Apps Script project on the Google Workspace Marketplace, or if you already have an add-on or app on this marketplace and are using authorization scopes which are now restricted, you will have to go through a TIER 2 CASA security assessment.
If you would like an overview of the process from a developer’s perspective you are in luck as Kelig Lefeuvre (Product Engineer at Scriptit & Folgo) has shared a guide specifically with Apps Script developers in mind. The article includes a number of useful tips and information about the review process which you won’t find in the official documentation.
As part of the CASA process Kelig recommends using the option to you can submit bypass the Fortify scan and submit your own results. those results Kelig has also provided a second article with a step-by-step guide on ‘how to scan your Google Apps Script project for CASA’.
This tutorial shows how to make a Google Chat app that a team can use to manage projects in real time. The Chat app uses Vertex AI to help teams write user stories (which represent features of a software system from the point of view of a user for the team to develop) and persists the stories in a Firestore database.
A recent episode of Totally Unscripted delved into “going beyond basic bots”, highlighting a couple of Google Chat app tutorials from the Google Developer documentation. One example, the “project management” Chat App, is worth mentioning in a Pulse post.
While this example uses Google Cloud Functions instead of Google Apps Script, as discussed in the episode, both approaches share many similarities. Deploying the project management app involves several steps, but I believe it’s a worthwhile investment to learn how to combine different solutions for building Google Workspace integrations. For developers seeking to expand their Google Workspace Add-on capabilities, this example serves as a valuable reference.
If you’re interested in using Firestore for data management but prefer Google Apps Script, Justin Poehnelt’s post on “Using Firestore in Apps Script.” is a great resource. This post provides a basic Firestore wrapper and links to other relevant Apps Script/Firestore libraries.
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.
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.
Search the body of a Google Doc for a specific string/pattern and insert an image in place of it.
In this example the code is designed to sit behind the Google Doc so it is bound to it. There are 4 pieces of information to complete in order to setup the script:
searchText – this is the unique string/pattern in the Doc that you want to replace with an image e.g. “<<keyword>>“
imageURL – this is the direct link to the image in Google Drive that you wish to use in the Doc.
size – a numerical value representing the number of pixels for the image’s width/height.
hyperlinkURL – if you want the image to be clickable then provide a link for it.
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
