Sending out emails as a part of a Google Workspace automated workflow is a very common task. In Google Apps Script we can send emails to users using the MailApp.sendEmail(), the GmailApp.sendEmail() method or even as a JSON payload with the Gmail Advanced API service.
While one might expect that the sender’s signature block would also be transmitted with the automated email, we find that this is not in fact the case.
Scott Donald highlights some of the pitfalls of trying to access the Gmail signatures using Google Apps Script. Fortunately Scott also shares a workaround for using a Gmail draft to store a number of signatures/snippets. This is all wrapped in a handy getSignatureBlock() function, created and shared by Scott to get either the user’s primary signature block or one stored in a draft.
There are two ways to pull email addresses from Gmail messages. The simpler, and more popular, method is that you pull a list of messages from which you wish to extract the email and loop over them to extract the email addresses. A more efficient way to pull email addresses from multiple email messages is to make a single batch request to the Gmail API with the help of Apps Script’s UrlFetch service.
We’ve featured a couple of posts on how you can make batch requests with Google Workspace APIs. With the limited runtime in Apps Script using batches can be an invaluable tool to finish your script in the execution limit and also improve your user experience. In this particular example for Amit Agarwal he looks at how batch requests can be made to the Gmail API by first get message details from a call to Gmail.Users.Messages.list, before getting message details in a single UrlFetchApp.fetchAll call. All the example code is included in the source post and to get to execute it copy/paste/run the following function:
Image credit: Full diagram of invoice automation in Gmail with Document AI and Apps Script – Stéphane Giron
Tired of manually managing your invoices in Gmail? Say goodbye to the hassle and hello to efficiency with Document AI and Apps Script.
There is a lot of buzz around generative AI, but it’s also worth remembering Google have a well established service offer in other forms of AI, the Document AI being one example of this. This post from Stéphane Giron highlight an Apps Script based workflow for analysing invoices attached to Gmail messages using the Document AI. There is a bit to setup in a Cloud project to get this working and as a paid for service costs to consider. Further information on this and all the code you need to get started are included in the source post.
The library lets you send emails, using MailApp, GmailApp, and Gmail API. The library takes care of parameters, so you do not need to care about which method to use. I had trouble with my project when I wanted to automatically send emails and suddenly for me we’ve reached the daily limit. This is why I’ve decided to make some research and be sure fewer bad things happen in the future.
If you are looking for a deep dive into Google Apps Script powered email sending options you are at the door of enlightenment. In this post from Max Makrov you not only to get an explanation of the options and benefits for sending email with MailApp, GmailApp and the Gmail API, but also a handy library, MmailApp. which makes it easy to switch between all three.
This week was the first time I’ve tried AWS. I wanted to test AWS SES to write some emails with the help of Amazon. The learning curve was painful for me because I was totally lost in the documentation. Here’s what I came through
Max Makhrov is on a role with Google Apps Script and Google Sheets development. As well as this latest Medium post looking at Amazon AWS Simple Email Service (or as Max discovered – ‘Not so Simple Email Service’) if not already well worth following Max on Twitter (@max__makhrov) for lots of very useful Google Sheets/Script tips.
If you are hitting your quotas on Google Workspace daily email sends using AWS SES could be one solution. If you want to avoid the bold banners in recipients inboxes here’s some additional required reading on How to Set Up AWS SES and Avoid Spam Folders is essential reading. This covers setting up DNS records for SPF, DKIM, DMARC when using AWS SES. As these changes are required at a DNS level it’s not possible to set this up on regular @gmail.com accounts.
Use Google AppsScript to automatically sync your reMarkable notes via Gmail to Notion.
Not the first example I’ve seen where the lack of API’s or other suitable integrations leads someone to using their inbox as an interface to move data around. This is a nice script example for moving handwritten notes made using reMarkable to project management and note-taking service, Notion. If you are not a Notion user it would be easy to send notes to another destination like Tasks, Sheets or a different external service like Coda.
+1, the webhook approach is nice because the Coda logic stays in Coda. I think it works best when the source (Apps Script in this case) just sends along data, not caring how it’s used.
There may be times when you want to present different content in your add-on’s homepage depending on certain conditions.
For example, I want to present a card to the user when they run my add-on for the first time (I’ll call it ‘card-A’), but present a different card for each subsequent time the add-on is run (‘card-B’).
Whilst this post from Clark Lind focuses on Gmail add-ons the code snippet could be used for other Google Workspace Add-ons for Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides that use the Card Service.
One the powerful features of Google Apps Script is with a couple of lines of code you can quickly start automating and organising your inbox. For people just getting started with Apps Script Google provide a introductory codelab ‘Accessing Google Sheets, Maps, and Gmail in 4 lines of code!’ and for those wanting to do a bit more the Google Workspace Developer documentation includes a ‘create a mail merge‘ solution.
Mail merge solutions are bit or a reoccurring theme in the world of Google Apps Script. In 2011 the official G Suite Developers Blog featured 4 ways to do Mail Merge using Google Apps Script with community contributions from James Ferreira, Steve Webster and Romain Vialard. The post references Romain’s ‘Yet another Mail Merge’ script, which he went on to develop as a very successful YAMM add-on before refocusing on the Mergo Mail Merge. Even further back when Google Apps Script was officially launched in 2009 this included a introductory video with a mail merge example.
A well as Google official channels the ability to automate your Gmail inbox has regularly caught the attention of the wider tech press. In 2013, Computerworld highlighted Jonathan Kim’s ‘Gmail No Response’ script which goes through your inbox and finds recent emails where you were the last respondent. Jonathan’s blog post is no longer available but the Gmail No Response’ script is on GitHub where it has been forked 100 times.
runs through the emails in your inbox and checks your outgoing messages for a question mark. Once it finds these emails it checks to see if they are in a date range and then sees if you have had a response. If you have not had a reply to your email containing a “?” then it adds the label “No Response”. You can then quickly see all of the threads for which you are awaiting a reply.
If you are interested in more Gmail script solutions then I highly recommend you have a look at content shared by Amit Agarwal. This doesn’t just include Apps Script solutions but also a number of Gmail tips and tricks. As many of these feature the way you can search your Gmail inbox they can also be used with GmailApp.search() or if using the Gmail Advanced Service Gmail.Users.Messages.list. A nice example of where a Gmail user tip can be used in Apps Script is Amit’s post which includes how to Search Emails by Specific Time in Gmail.
With this reusable script you can create multiple labels in Gmail whenever you need to do so. All you have to do is create the script as shown in the video and then use it to create multiple Gmail labels in one go.
Continuing the Gmail label theme in this latest video tutorial from Chanel Greco you can learn how to batch create Gmail labels from data in a Google Sheet.
In this post I want to cover three things. First I want to introduce a little app I’ve developed which allows you to create a RSS feed for any of your Gmail labels (with the option to remove certain links – useful if you don’t want others unsubscribing you from mailing lists). Secondly I explain how it was made and how you can use it yourself. Finally I want to discuss how this could be used in an open course environment, utilising the vast processing power from services like Twitter and reusing their target marketing emails to your benefit with a bit of ‘dark social judo’.
This solution was first published in May 2013 and since then Google Apps Script has evolved deprecating services that originally made this solution possible, in particular, ScriptDB and the original XML service which includes a handy .parseJS() method.
Following a request I’ve recently updated the solution to make it work again. As well as swapping out ScriptDB in favor of using the Properties Service I used the makeRSS method previously highlighted here in Apps Script Pulse.
