Today I had the task of implementing a newsletter for internal updates and decided to use Google Apps Script since I was already using it for managing the project data. Based upon past experiences with emails using HTML I need this area was full of landmines and I didn’t want to navigate through it. 💣
So I decided to use MJML with Google Apps Script.
Sending emails using Google Apps Script is a common task, however, creating HTML emails that render consistently across different email clients and that look visually appealing can be challenging.
Justin Poehnelt’s post on DEV Community, “Using MJML in Google Apps Script to Send Beautiful Emails,” offers a solution to this problem. MJML is a markup language that makes it easy to create responsive HTML emails. It removes some of the complexities of HTML email development, allowing users to focus on the content of their emails.
In the post, Justin explains how to use MJML with Google Apps Script to send beautiful, responsive emails. He also mentions that he has published a library, MJMLApp, that “hides the gnarly bits” of using MJML with Google Apps Script. This library is available on GitHub in the mjml-apps-script repo where you can find the library ID and basic usage information.
If your organization is using G-Suite (now known as Google Workspaces) then you’re hopefully using Google Apps Script to automate your email communication. (If you aren’t, why not? It’s a brilliant way to manage your communications.) You probably have different types of emails — for different purposes.
Do all of your emails have the same look-and-feel? Do they all match your organization’s branding requirements? How easy is it to update the format for all of them if you need to change a core/base element? Maybe the company tagline and color theme changed — how quickly can you get all of your emails updated?
I am going to show you how to create templated emails so that all of the emails you send have the same look-and-feel and are easy to maintain/update.
Turn your spreadsheet into a database with examples for querying, inserting, updating, and deleting via API. In this guide. I’ll also explore the limitations of Google Sheets, including scalability, and where it makes sense to start looking at more complex alternatives.
Whilst not directly Google Apps Script related this post from Jacob Lee (Co-founder Autocode) provides lots of useful advice and tips on using Google Sheets as a database. The post also does an excellent job of highlighting the hard limits as well as usability issues before you hit those limits.
