AppsScriptPulse

Official News, Solutions, Groups, Sheets

Streamline access to resources for vendors via Google Sheet – Sheets to Apps

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Need to share a variety of documents with vendors? Don’t want to share access one by one? In this episode of Sheets to Apps, we’ll cover how to use an Apps Script in a Google Sheet to automatically add members to a Google Group, helping you share documents at a large scale that will save you time.

We’ve previously shared the Medium post that provides more details for setting up this solution. If you missed that post or were unclear Alexandrina Garcia-Verdin, better known in the community as AGV, provides a very useful overview.

The code and other resources presented in this episode are available from the video description.

Official News

Overview of the power of Apps Script – Apps Script in a Snap

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In this first episode of Apps Script in a Snap, Joanna Smith will go over what exactly Apps Script is and how you can use it to tailor any of G Suite’s productivity apps – such as Google Drive, Google Sheets, Google Docs, and Google Drive – to match and streamline your workflow.

The G Suite DevRel team have been busy. As well as AGV’s excellent Sheets to Apps series, some new videos are coming out from Joanna Smith in ‘Apps Script in a Snap!’. Currently these are very top level intro videos and it will be interesting to see where they go with this series.

Official News, Solutions, Forms, Sheets

Automate onboarding of company resources from a Google Sheet – Sheets to Apps

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In this episode of Sheets to Apps, we cover how to give newcomers access to resources via Google Forms and an Apps Script that lives in a Google Sheets, making on-boarding new employees simple and easy.

The code and other resources presented in this episode are available from the video description.

Official News, V8

Apps Script’s new V8 runtime | Google Cloud Blog

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This update to Apps Script lets users take advantage of modern JavaScript features and enhances new or existing scripts with less verbose, more standardized code.

This post from Alexandrina Garcia-Verdin, better known in the community as AGV, highlights some of the benefits of the new Google Apps Script V8 runtime including succinct syntax and data processing operations: map(), filter() and reduce(). As part this AGV also highlights some of the resources from Ben Collins and Amit Agarwal put together to support the community transition to V8. A nice feature of this post from AGV is side-by-side comparisons of old and new JavaScript syntax:

Image source: Google

Source: Apps Script’s new V8 runtime | Google Cloud Blog

Official News, Solutions, Sheets

Google Developers Blog: Evolving automations into applications using Apps Script

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Two years ago, our team began building custom software to automate the multi-stage and highly manual team staffing process. Building internal software has allowed the same-size Staffing Operations Team (3 members!) to enjoy a 60x reduction in time spent staffing each role.

The Apps Script ecosystem has emerged as the most critical component in our toolkit for building this internal software, due to its versatility and ease of deployment. We want to share how one piece of the staffing process has evolved to become more powerful over time thanks to Apps Script. Ultimately, we hope that sharing this journey enables all types of teams to build their own tools and unlock new possibilities.

Source: Google Developers Blog: Evolving automations into applications using Apps Script

Official News, Solutions, Forms, Sheets

Manage new employee equipment requests within Google Sheets – Sheets to Apps

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In today’s episode of Sheets to Apps, @TechandEco will show you how to manage new employee equipment requests with Google Sheets.

See the video description for all the links you need including the reference documentation.

Official News, Solutions

Why organizations build with Google Apps Script – YouTube

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On the G Suite YouTube channel you’ll find a new playlist for “why organizations build with Google Apps Script” which contains contributions from Cleo Espiritu, Ivan Kutil, Niek Waarbroek and myself. Hopefully these clips are useful in encouraging users to look at Google Apps Script as a powerful and agile development solution.

Official News, Solutions, Calendar, Sheets

How to track time with Google Calendar and sync to Google Sheets – Sheets to Apps

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In this episode of Sheets to Apps, we will show you how to track your work time on projects via Google Calendar. More importantly, he’ll be showing you how you can sync Calendar events to Google Sheets, creating a spreadsheet that shows you the total time spent on your projects.

Short video highlighting Jasper Duizendstra’s G Suite Developer Solution Gallery contribution.  See the YouTube description for all the links you need.

Official News, V8

V8 Runtime Overview  |  Apps Script  |  Google Developers

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Historically, Apps Script has been powered by Mozilla’s Rhino JavaScript interpreter. While Rhino provided a convenient way for Apps Script to execute developer scripts, it also tied Apps Script to a specific JavaScript version (ES5). Apps Script developers can’t use more modern JavaScript syntax and features in scripts using the Rhino runtime.

To address this concern, Apps Script is now supported by the V8 runtime that powers Chrome and Node.js. You can migrate existing scripts to V8 in order to take advantage of the modern JavaScript syntax and features.

This page describes the new features enabled by V8 and how you can enable V8 for use in your scripts. Migrating scripts to V8 describes steps for migrating existing scripts to use the V8 runtime.

Developers have been waiting a while for the new Google Apps Script runtime, since 2018 in fact, but it’s now here. The new runtime not only allows developers to use modern JavaScript syntax but when announced in 2018 also comes with a a tenfold (x10) faster execution. Follow the link to the developer docs for the full migration guide.

Source: V8 Runtime Overview  |  Apps Script  |  Google Developers

Official News, App Maker

App Maker will be shut down on January 19, 2021

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Source image credit: Dana Fried @leftoblique

G Suite Admins have started to be notified that App Maker will be shutdown on January 19, 2021. In the turndown notification Google cited ‘low usage’ as the reason for the shutdown. This news comes shortly after the announcement of Google acquisition of no code platform AppSheet and AppSheet is identified as one of the alternative platforms:

Due to the specific source code used for App Maker, you can’t directly migrate your apps to another platform. Depending on your use case, we recommend these alternative tools:

  • If you use App Maker to automate business processes: Use AppSheet, a new addition to our app development portfolio that has capabilities similar to App Maker. App Maker data is stored in Cloud SQL, and App Sheet supports Cloud SQL databases. This allows you to build an application on the existing database tied to your App Maker app.
  • If you use App Maker to develop apps: Use App Engine to build and deploy applications on a fully managed platform. App Maker data is stored in Cloud SQL, allowing you to build an App Engine application on the existing Cloud SQL database tied to your App Maker app.
  • If you use App Maker for data collection: Use Google Forms, which has many new features that were not available when App Maker launched.

Google included the following schedule for turndown:

  • Today, existing apps continue to work. Though App Maker is no longer under active development, the service will continue to be maintained.
  • Starting April 15, 2020, you will no longer be able to create new App Maker apps. You will still be able to edit and deploy existing apps.
  • Starting January 19, 2021, App Maker apps will stop working and you will no longer have access to them. App Maker data stored in Cloud SQL will remain unchanged and continue to follow the policies established by your Google Cloud Platform (GCP) account.

Source: Google App Maker will be shut down on January 19, 2021