The Advanced Chat service lets you use the Google Chat API in Apps Script. This API allows scripts to find, create, and modify Chat spaces, add or remove members to spaces, and read or post messages with text, cards, attachments, and reactions.
There have been a number of updates to the Google Chat API summarised in the linked release notes page. A recent announcement which might interest Google Apps Script developers is the generally available of a new Advanced Chat Service. As noted in the official documentation:
The Advanced Chat service lets you use the Google Chat API in Apps Script. This API allows scripts to find, create, and modify Chat spaces, add or remove members to spaces, and read or post messages with text, cards, attachments, and reactions.
There are some perquisites to use the Advanced Chat service besides the usual turning it on before use, the main one being the requirement to use a standard Google Cloud console project rather than the default project created automatically.
If you have strong AppSheet technical skills along with solid Google Workspace skills and would like to share your expertise globally as a recognized “Google Developer Expert” (GDE), we would like to invite you to apply to become an official GDE member specializing in AppSheet and Workspace!
The Google Developer Experts program is a great way to get recognised for your abilities, but more importantly an opportunity to get close to the Google product teams to learn and share your day-to-day experiences. Whilst AppSheet is positioned as a no/low code solution it doesn’t mean there aren’t individuals out their developing sophisticated apps and supporting the community along the way.
If this sounds like you the AppSheet team are looking for community experts to become the next AppSheet GDEs. This source post includes some more information as well as a form where you can note your interested. As a GDE of 9+ years I’m also happy to share my experience of the program and what I think it takes to stand out from the crowd.
The key takeaway for Google Apps Script users is unlike Google Docs which can automatically save a version history of a document, Apps Script project history requires the user to use deployments (Deploy > Manage deployments) to create a version should you want to see get a highlights or code changes between the current and previous versions. This will be less of an issue if you are using Google Apps Script to deploy web apps, Workspace Add-ons or libraries, which already use deployments, but for other situations like container bound scripts you might want to get into the habit of using the Deploy button to create a version.
Join the experts on October 6th to learn Apps Script tips and tricks to combine APIs, automation, configuration as code, and more to improve your productivity using Google Workspace. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just getting started with low-code development, this event will provide you with the insights and information you need to start building custom solutions with Google Apps Script.
Recently on Pulse we highlighted the ‘Getting the most out of Google Workspace with Apps Script, tips and tricks’ session as part of Google Cloud Next ’23. This wasn’t one of the livestreamed sessions, but the good news is the session is being rerun online on October 06, 2023 @ 9am PT / 4pm UTC, hosted by Charles Maxson and Kara Ireland from the Google Workspace team.
As well as using the source link to register for the event there is a form link where you can submit your questions in advance. If you can’t make the live session registering will also mean you’ll get notified about the recording. Looking forward to seeing other community members in the YouTube Live chat!
Whether you are a seasoned Workspace developer, just getting started, or somewhere in between, the Google Workspace Developer Summit is a great opportunity to learn more about how you build creative and unique solutions for your business or even the world.
The Google Workspace Developer Relations team are back on the road with in-person summits scheduled for Singapore, Bangalore, Amsterdam and Zürich. These events are a great opportunity find out what is new in the Google Workspace developer ecosystem as well as meeting other people interested integrating and extending Google Workspace products.
Given the nature of Google Workspace, don’t feel you have to be a pro-coder to classify yourself as a ‘Workspace Developer’. Products and features like AppSheet and the Duet AI increasingly blur the lines creating opportunities for a growing audience for Google Workspace centred workflows and solutions.
The full day events are free to attend and you can register to join at the following dates/locations:
We are excited to roll out to GA (General Availability) our first visual editing features to all AppSheet creators, starting today.
This a new way for AppSheet creators to make changes to their apps and navigate the editor. It’s intuitive for anyone to point at what they want to change if they can see it. We are now letting you do that in the editor: you can now hover on visual components of the editor’s app view and see possible editor actions for the outlined component.
Google recently announced the rollout of new new visual editing features in AppSheet. The new feature should help simplify and speed up app development (see the source post for an animated gif / video of what it looks like). In the announcement Google mention that the new feature isn’t available for all components:
Outlines are only available for some components visible in the app. For instance, Detail and Form Views have a lot more controls than the Deck View right now. Additionally, only some Editor actions are available, such as navigating users to Data components, View components, Action components and some of the general Settings.
More updates are planned and if you don’t see this feature in AppSheet yet the rollout has been paused for Google Cloud Next and should be available for everyone soon.
To bring the power of AppSheet to more users, AppSheet Core licenses will now be included for the following Google Workspace editions…
By including AppSheet Core licenses in more Google Workspace editions, the power of AppSheet is accessible to more users. Further, Admins will have the security features they need to ensure their users are using AppSheet appropriately in their organization.
Previously AppSheet Core licenses were included with Workspace Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Essentials Plus, and Education Plus users. Google have recently announced that AppSheet Core licenses will also be included in the following Google Workspace editions:
Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
Enterprise Starter and Standard
Frontline Starter and Standard
Non-profits
Education Standard
This is great news for Google Workspace users as AppSheet includes a number of out-of-the box features which already integrate into other Workspace products, like dynamic emails, Google Chat and Google Apps Script integration.
Along with the expansion of Workspace editions getting AppSheet Core, is the news that Admins will have basic security controls which can disable external usage of AppSheet apps.
Looking at the associated new security settings support page, it was interesting to see that turning on AppSheet Core security will disable ‘external integration through the app API’:
Finally a little plug. If you are interested in AppSheet and would like to find out about training and support services get in touch. At CTS, where I work, we’ve a growing reputation in both products built using AppSheet as well as helping you get the most from the platform in your organisation.
Project IDX is a browser-based development experience built on Google Cloud and powered by Codey, a foundational AI model trained on code and built on PaLM 2. It’s designed to make it easier to build, manage and deploy full-stack web and multiplatform applications, with popular frameworks and languages. Project IDX is also built on Code OSS, so it should feel familiar no matter what you’re building.
Where will the online Google Apps Script go next? Google have announced it’s latest experiment in browser based IDEs in the form of Project IDX. A key feature of Project IDX is integration with AI tools to help developers:
With Project IDX, we’re exploring how Google’s innovations in AI — including the Codey and PaLM 2 models powering Studio Bot in Android Studio, Duet in Google Cloud and more – can help you not only write code faster, but also write higher-quality code. Currently, Project IDX has smart code completion, an assistive chatbot, and contextual code actions like “add comments” and “explain this code”. Our AI capabilities are in their very early days, and we’re working on making IDX AI even better at helping you as you work.
Project IDX isn’t publicly available but there is a waitlist you can join from the website. Give Project IDX is an online IDE it will be interested to see if features are rolled into the Script Editor. At the very least as you can develop offline using tools like clasp it open up interesting opportunities for Apps Script development.
When we announced MakerSuite earlier this year, we were delighted to see people from all over the world sign up for the waitlist. With MakerSuite we want to help anyone become an AI maker and easily create innovative AI applications with Google’s large generative models. We’re excited to see how it’s being used.
Today, we’re expanding access to MakerSuite to cover 179 countries and territories, including anyone with a Google Workspace account. This means that more developers than ever can sign up to create AI applications with our latest language model, PaLM 2.
We’ve recently featured a couple of posts on Pulse mostly from Aryan Irani on getting started Google GenAI tools in Google Apps Script. As part of these Google MakerSuite, a tool that lets developers start prototyping with Google’s large language models quickly and easily, is used as part of the API calls to PaLM. MakerSuite is still in private preview, but the good news in the linked announcement that the waitlist has been expanded to 179 countries. Given how Google have rolled out other GenAI tools, in particular Bard, I’m not surprised that EU countries are still not included, but find it strange at time of writing the United Kingdom is still not on the list. Despite this the announcement is worth a read to find about some other new features including automatic text prompt tips and data import/export to Google Sheets and by CSV.
Want to write better prompts? Now, you can write a text prompt and click “Prompt Suggestion” to get ideas and suggestions to get better responses – Image credit: Google
