AppsScriptPulse

Official News, Docs, Sheets, Slides

New Smart Chips (including AppSheet apps) plus third-party @menu resources in the Google Workspace Editors 

Tags:
| | 0 Comments |

There have been a number of recent updates and announcements around Smart Chips and other integrations to Google Docs, as well as Sheets and Slides. Some have just gone into the Google Workspace Developer Preview Program (DPP), whilst in the case of AppSheet smart chips for Google Docs they are generally available!

AppSheet smart chips for Google Docs

Starting with AppSheet smart chips for Google Docs if you already had the AppSheet Google Docs add-on installed you already have AppSheet smart chips enabled. More details including a link to the Workspace Marketplace Add-on are included in the related Workspace Updates post. The AppSheet smart chips are great way to integrate some of your app functionality in your Google Docs.

Preview links with smart chips in Sheets and Slides

We’ve had custom smart chip link previews for Google Docs for some time, but Google have recently added the same functionality to Sheets and Slides. If you have already developed link previews for Google Docs the good news is there isn’t much more you need to do to enable these for Sheets and Slides (mostly updating your manifest). More details are included on the updated Preview links with smart chips documentation page.

Create third-party resources from the @ menu

Finally, also gone into preview is third-party resource integration which you can use to “let users quickly create resources, such as tasks, support cases, or issues, in your service right from Google Docs. The new resource is then inserted into Google Docs as a smart chip.”. You can read more in the create third-party resources from the @ menu documentation page.

In the case of the preview features a reminder that this is your opportunity to test and give feedback to Google. Links to join and provide feedback are included in the Google Workspace Developer Preview page. Enjoy!

Solutions, AI, Chat, Docs, Advanced

Tutorial: Respond to incidents with Google Chat, Vertex AI, and Apps Script

Tags:
| | 0 Comments |

Imagen: photo looking over the shoulder of a robot looking at a screen with chat messages and hand writing notes

This tutorial shows how to make a Google Chat app that responds to incidents in real time. When responding to an incident, the app creates and populates a Chat space, facilitates incident resolution with messages, slash commands, and dialogs, and uses AI to summarize the incident response in a Google Docs document.

Paraphrasing noted Google Workspace Developer Expert, Romain Vialard, GenAI has made Google Chat apps a tangible prospect. This tutorial from the  Google Developers site is a great example of how you can use Google’s Vertex AI with Google Chat. The tutorial will help you create a Google Apps Script powered Chat app that is able to summaries the messages in a Google Chat space.

There is a lot to take away from this example, but here are some of the headlines:

  • Setting a Google Cloud Project to use the new Google Chat Advanced Service for Apps Script
  • Setup and code for making calls to Google’s Vertex AI PaLM API (LLM) from Google Apps Script
  • Using the responses from Vertex AI to generate new assets.

There is a lot more you can do from this starting point, but hopefully it gives you a great starting point.

Source: Respond to incidents with Google Chat, Vertex AI, and Apps Script  |  Google for Developers

Snippet, Solutions, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Intermediate

Retrieve comments with emoji reactions from Google Docs, Google Slides and Google Sheet using Google Apps Script

Tags:
| | 0 Comments |

This report introduces the method for retrieving the Emoji reactions from the comments in Google Docs files (Google Documents, Google Slides, and Google Spreadsheets) using Google Apps Script.

Here’s a clever workaround by Kanshi Tanaike for retrieving comments with emoji reactions in Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets using Google Apps Script. The process to achieve this is a little convoluted in that Google Docs, Slides and Sheets are exported in Microsoft equivalent formats, then re-imported into Google formats. To remove some of the pain the post includes sample code snippets for achieving this, which can easily be adapted.

Source: Retrieve Comments with Emoji Reactions from Google Documents, Google Slides, and Google Spreadsheets using Google Apps Script

Solutions, Docs, Drive, Slides, Intermediate

How to extract images from Google Docs and Google Slides using Google Apps Script

Tags:
| | 0 Comments |

Learn how extract all the embedded images from a Google Document or Google Slides presentation and save them as individual files in a specified folder in your Google Drive.

Often I’ll use Google Docs for drafting blog posts. With the introduction of Duet AI having a generative assistant in situ helps with the creative process. As well as text Google Docs is a really simple canvas for quickly copy/pasting screenshots. Copying content from Google Docs to WYSIWYG editors can sometimes be challenging, particularly, when it comes to images.

Next time I encounter this problem I’ll be using the script solution from Amit Agarwal, which can extract images from Google Docs and Slides and save them to Google Drive. I’m sure there are many other situations where this snippet could come in handy.

Source: How to Extract Images from Google Docs and Google Slides – Digital Inspiration

Add-on, New IDE, Snippet, Solutions, Docs, V8, Intermediate

Creating your on preview ink Smart Chips in Google Docs: The Untold Potential of Apps Script

Tags:
| | 0 Comments |

 

Alright, folks, we’re talking about something quite hot off the press in the realm of Google Apps Script — “Smart Chips.” This feature is available within Google Docs and can build previews of pasted links using the Card Service. Think of it as a little preview window of what lies beyond the link — a sneak peek, if you will. 🕵️‍♂️

Editor: Smart chips are a recent feature in Google Workspace that help you quickly insert information into your Docs and Sheets. They can be used to insert people, places, dates, and more. It’s also possible for Google Workspace developers to publish their on ‘Preview links’ smart chips as Workspace Add-ons. In this post from Dmitry Kostyuk you can learn about publishing your own smart chips and some creative ways to get the data you need using Google Apps Script.

Source: Previewing Links with Smart Chips: The Untold Potential of Apps Script

Library, Solutions, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Intermediate

Easily merge data from Google Sheets into Google Docs and Slides with the TemplateApp Google Apps Script

Tags:
| | 0 Comments |

This report introduces the method for easily processing the template of Google Documents and Google Slides using Google Spreadsheet as a database using Google Apps Script. Google Spreadsheet is used as a database. Google Documents and Google Slides are used as templates. The simple method for creating new Google Documents and Google Slides using the database and the templates is introduced.

Latest Apps Script magic from Kanshi Tanaike, this time they turn their addition to an easy way to use data from Google Sheets as a ‘document merge’ for templates created in Google Docs and Google Slides. This is achieved by using the TemplateApp Apps Script library, which has lots of useful features including simply methods for sheetRangeToDocuments() as well as the ability to embeded and fixed width images from placeholders. There are some llimitations documented in the GitHub repo, as well as examples for all the methods available in the library.

[In other ‘merge’ news Google have announced that you can now use Google Sheets with Google official mail merge in Gmail]

 

Source: Easily Processing Templates of Google Documents and Google Slides using Google Spreadsheet with Google Apps Script

Solutions, Docs, Beginner

Create instant summaries in Google Docs: A step-by-step guide with OpenAI API and Google Apps Script

Tags:
| | 0 Comments |

In today’s fast-paced digital world, effectively condensing lengthy content has become a necessity. Whether you’re a student grappling with research papers or a professional striving to stay ahead, generating concise summaries can save time and boost productivity. Luckily, the powerful combination of OpenAI APIs and Google Apps Script provides a seamless solution for effortlessly summarising paragraphs within Google Docs

Learn how to generate instant summaries in Google Docs using a step-by-step guide that combines the OpenAI API and Google Apps in this informative blog post on Medium. Discover the power of automated summarisation to enhance your document creation process.

Source: Create Instant Summaries in Google Docs: A Step-by-Step Guide with OpenAI API and Google Apps Script

Solutions, Docs, Sheets, Beginner

Automating Google Docs Creation from Google Spreadsheet using Google Apps Script

Tags:
| | 0 Comments |

If you frequently find yourself creating multiple Google Docs that follow a similar template and pull data from a Google Spreadsheet, this tutorial is for you. Today, I’m going to show you how to automate the process using Google Apps Script.

I liked the simplicity of this script which does a very basic data merge on Google Docs template from Google Sheets data. There is a bit of piecing together to get this one working but basically it’s uses a very simple replaceText pattern which maps the spreadsheet column number to replacement tokens {{col1}}, {{col2}}, etc. Read the source post to see all the code.

Source: Automating Google Docs Creation from Google Spreadsheet using Google Apps Script

Solutions, Docs, Sheets, Beginner

Create a Google Doc for a single row of Google Sheet data with Google Apps Script

Tags:
| | 0 Comments |

Use a row of data in a Google Sheet to pass to a Google Doc via Apps Script

Use a row of data in a Google Sheet to pass to a Google Doc via Apps Script

Create a Google Doc containing the information from a selected row of Sheet data.

The following Google Apps Script is designed to create a Google Doc for the selected row of data in a Google Sheet and to include some of that data within the new Doc. it also creates a link to the new Doc back in the Sheet on the relevant row.

Source: The Gift of Script: Create a Google Doc for a single row of Sheet data

Solutions, Docs, Forms, Sheets, V8, Advanced

The Ultimate Google Apps Script Front-End Development Guide. Part 0: The Worst and the Best Practices

Tags:
| | 0 Comments |

Welcome to the Ultimate Google Ultimate Google Apps Script Front-End Development Guide!

If you are reading this post, then you likely have experience with Google Apps Script. Essentially, there are three types of front-ends that you can create with Apps Script:

  • Web apps
  • Modal/modeless dialogues
  • Sidebars

In this blog post series, we will only discuss HTML front-ends, as this is where you can create the most powerful and sophisticated user experiences. Unfortunately, the Card Service is outside the scope of this series, and it is not nearly as powerful as an HTML front-end. With that in mind, Google, how about allowing HTML front-ends for Workspace add-ons?

Source: The Ultimate Google Apps Script Front-End Development Guide. Part 0: The Worst and the Best Practices