Assign Google Workspace licences for individuals without using the Admin Console, via a simple Form submission.
Screenshot of the Google Form title used for submission
The following Google Apps Script is designed to automate the assigning of a Google Workspace (e.g. Education Plus) licence in the Google Admin Console, for individual accounts/users by providing them with a quick Google Form to submit.
This saves having to manually go into the Google Admin Console and assign a licence. All the user has to do is tick the box on the Google Form, they will receive an automated confirmation email and their new licence will be applied within 24 hours.
You can refer to the Google product and SKU IDs webpage if you need to assign a different licence type. There is some basic checking to see if an account/user is an ‘Administrator’ and it will therefore prevent them from getting a licence.
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
Learn how to automatically maintain consistent formatting, styles, and date formats when new Google Form responses are added to your Google Sheets.
Tired of Google Form responses messing up your carefully formatted Google Sheets? When new submissions come in, they often ignore the styles you’ve set, resulting in inconsistent looking data. Amit Agarwal, has created a guide that uses Google Apps Script to automatically maintain consistent formatting when new responses are added.
Google Forms does not apply any formatting when it adds new response data to a Google Sheet; this means that custom fonts, alignments, and date formats can be lost. Amit’s solution uses Google Apps Script to copy the formatting from the previous row to the new row, ensuring all data has a consistent look. The Apps Script runs automatically when a new form is submitted and identifies the new row and copies the formatting from the row above.
The guide provides a complete script with instructions for adding it to your Google Sheet and setting up a trigger. The script uses the copyFormatToRange method, which is designed specifically for copying only formatting between ranges. If you want to make sure your Google Sheet stays neatly formatted, check out Amit’s full guide to learn how to set up this handy automation for yourself.
Google Apps Script to check that a date submitted via a Google Form is both in the future and falls on a Wednesday.
Google Form question asking for a date to be entered
The following Google Apps Script is designed to check that a date submitted via a Google Form is both in the future and falls on a Wednesday. This was developed as part of a newsletter submission process to help validate information and inform a user when they had not followed the instructions. It has been developed for UK dates and may need adjusting for your own time zone.
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
This report proposes a novel learning method using Gemini to automate Q&A generation, addressing the challenges of manual Q&A creation. By integrating with Google tools, this approach aims to enhance learning efficiency, accessibility, and personalization while reducing costs.
The rapid advancement of technology has offered both opportunities and challenges to the education sector. While technology can be a valuable tool for supporting teaching and learning, concerns about its appropriate use have existed for a long time.
The education sector is witnessing an increase in AI tools, each promising to enhance teaching and learning. However, the quality of these tools varies significantly. Some are better designed and can – if used appropriately – can be beneficial, while others are poorly designed. This can make it challenging for educators to find the right solutions that meet their specific needs.
This blog post by Kanshi Tanaike sheds light on the inner workings of some commercial AI tools developed for educators. It demonstrates how these tools can use generative AI to create multiple-choice questions (MCQs) on a given topic. In this particular solution, Google Forms are used in the process, with questions and answers automatically generated by the Gemini API for the user to answer in a Google Form.
For educators who have experience with Google Apps Script, this project looks like a useful starting point to refine and create your own solution or simply used to gain insights into the functioning of similar commercial tools.
Use Google Apps Script to create a custom menu that will work inside Google Sheets, Google Docs, Slides and Google Forms.
Tired of writing separate code for custom menus in Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms? This nifty Google Apps Script snippet by Amit Agarwal helps you build a universal menu that works across all these apps!
The solution is a small snippet which detects the context to see which of DocumentApp, SpreadsheetApp, FormApp, SlidesApp are available which then lets you switch to get the appropriate .getUI() method.
Check out the source post for the full code and streamline your add-on development!
If your automations are not being triggered by Google Form submissions, Pablo Felip’s tip is it could be because your Google Workspace Admin has turned on AppSheet Core Security.
Learn how to move uploaded files from Google Forms to a specific folder in Google Drive. You can also rename the files based on the form responses
Amit Agarwal, the brains behind Digital Inspiration’s Document Studio must have one of the most feature full Google Workspace Marketplace Add-ons. I also like Amit’s approach of sharing how you can solve problems like moving Google Form file uploads using Document Studio as well as providing an Apps Script snippet if you would like to manually code it.
In this example some setup is required to specify a folder ID and create an onFormSubmit trigger. After this the script then retrieves uploaded files from the form response, creates a subfolder named after the unique Response ID, and moves the files into that subfolder within the specified parent folder. This provides a structured and organized way to manage file uploads from Google Forms.
Follow the source link to read more about this script solution and about Document Studio.
In this TU Special, we dive into the exciting new features coming to Google AppSheet and take a first look at the new Google Forms integration. For this special our co-host, Martin Hawksey is joined by Steve Franks (Head of Workspace Engineering, CTS Appsbroker). The discussion/demo was originally presented as an internal tech talk conducted at CTS Appsbroker – warning the episode contains some ‘passionate’ language.
Initial key takeaways which we discuss are:
Seamless Data Collection: Google Forms now acts as a first-class data source for AppSheet, eliminating the need for workarounds and additional add-ons. Data collected through forms automatically flows into AppSheet, creating a smooth and efficient workflow.
External Participation: The integration allows external parties to interact with your apps by simply filling out a Google Form. This opens up new possibilities for data collection and process involvement.
Powerful Automations: AppSheet’s automation capabilities can be triggered by form submissions, enabling you to create sophisticated workflows. The example discussed involves sending an email with an embedded AppSheet view upon form completion, allowing for approvals or further actions within the email itself.
Simplified Development: The integration makes building apps even easier, especially for those already familiar with Google Forms. The need for complex configurations or AppScripts is minimized, empowering users to focus on the business logic and desired outcomes.
Versatility: AppSheet has increased functionality, opening up a wider range of possibilities for app development and automation for Google Workspace customers. It can be used to create full-fledged apps with user interfaces or simply act as a behind-the-scenes automation engine.
Overall, the integration of Google Forms and AppSheet should significantly help empower users to build powerful solutions without coding expertise. Read more about “Build AppSheet automations using Google Forms” on the Google Workspace Updates blog.
Caution when using onFormSubmit triggers to avoid mass simultaneous executions when un/linking a Response Sheet.
The following post is a caution around onFormSubmit triggers after I recently discovered a way that somebody had inadvertently managed to execute my code simultaneously over 253 times. Now unless a Google Form is submitted by 253 individuals all at the same time … then this is baffling.
When should an onFormSubmit trigger run?
At the point when a Google Form has been completed and the ‘Submit’ button pressed.
How else can the trigger be activated?
Well … it turns out when you unlink and then link back a Google Response Sheet containing the onFormSubmit trigger, it will activate it for every single Form response collected up to that point in time …
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
Use the Apps Script Lock Service to control Form submissions and prevent data loss
Lock Service code snippet
The following Google Apps Script is a one example of how the Lock Service can be used to prevent concurrent running of code. Here we have a Google Form that can be submitted by users at any point, the code then takes some of those details and appends them to another Google Sheet row. In normal circumstances this will happen relatively quickly and without clashes, but what if multiple people submit the Form at the same time!?
[Editor note: An alternative approach to tryLock() is waitLock(). The only different with a waitLock() is it will throw an exception after the set number of milliseconds. An example of waitLock() with onFormSubmit is included in the reference documentation]
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
