AppsScriptPulse

Solutions, AppSheet, No Code

The democratisation of app development with Duet AI for AppSheet

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From one simple prompt with Duet AI for AppSheet you are able to create a well structured application.

I recently had the pleasure of the opportunity to speak at DevFest Scotland. My topic was how you can use code with Google’s ‘no-code’ solution AppSheet. You can see some of the ways this is achievable in my shared slides. Whilst there are coding opportunities with AppSheet and having some coding/data schema knowledge is useful, I would argue that this is increasingly becoming less important.

In this post on the CTS Medium I share how Duet AI for AppSheet has hugely reduced the entry point for app creation. As part of this I share how a simple request to the Duet AI for AppSheet assistant of ‘an easy way for volunteers to borrow a laptop’ becomes the starting point for a well structured application. Having introduced AppSheet to a number of customers I can’t emphasise enough how big a step this is in the democratisation of app creation. Exciting times!

[Thanks to Christian Schalk and the AppSheet team for early access to Duet AI for AppSheet and providing input on the source post].

Source: The democratisation of app development with Duet AI for AppSheet

Solutions, Sheets, Intermediate

Two ways to remove duplicate rows from Google Sheets using Google Apps Script

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For many years users had to find a variety of workarounds if they wanted to remove duplicate rows from Google Sheets. This all changed in 2019 when Google announced new features, which included removing duplicates from Google Sheets. Recently I got tagged in a conversation with Andrea Guerri who shared some ‘remove duplicate’ example scripts. This sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole looking at various ‘remove duplicate’ Apps Script solutions and I’ll share two of my favourites.

Source: Two ways to remove duplicate rows from Google Sheet using Google Apps Script

Solutions, Admin SDK, Sheets, Intermediate

Google Apps Script Patterns: Keeping a gam generated users report up-to-date with Google Apps Script

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In Google Workspace gam is probably the ‘go to’ tool command line tool which allows administrators to easily manage domain and user settings. Recently I was asked about how you can keep gam generated reports up-to-date using Google Apps Script. It’s worth remember that gam uses public Google Workspace APIs when it performs actions and reports. In this post I show you a pattern for building script to keep gam reports fresh.

Source: Google Apps Script Patterns: Keeping a gam generated users report up-to-date with Google Apps Script

Solutions, Drive, Sheets, V8, Intermediate

Creating a Google Drive report in Google Sheets: Making Google Workspace Enterprise solutions with Google Apps Script

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Image credit: Martin Hawksey (with the help of DALL·E 2)

Think 10x — supercharging your Google Apps Script solutions by directly calling Google Workspace Enterprise APIs.

The Google Apps Script built-in services like SpreadsheetApp, Maps and GmailApp are a great onramp for users with limited coding experience, the flip side is you can find yourself easily getting results but not in the most efficient way. DriveApp is a great example where Google have made it easy to iterate across folders and files, but when you have lots of folders and files it becomes a time consuming process and you hit execution limits.

An alternative approach is using Google Apps Script to make direct calls to the Drive API. The benefits of this approach is you can be more specific in the data you want back and it gives more flexibility with how you call the API, in some cases with the ability to make batch or asynchronous processes.

In this post I highlight a method ideal for scenarios when you want to index larger volumes of My Drive files and folders to a Google Sheet with calls directly to the Drive API. The post includes some sample code you can use which instead is able to reduce a 4 minute runtime to index 10,000 files and folders to one that can complete in under 40 seconds!

Source: Creating a Google Drive report in Google Sheets: Making Google Workspace Enterprise solutions with Google Apps Script

Solutions, AppSheet, Sheets, Web App, V8, Intermediate

AppSheet/PayPal integrated payment solutions and tips on handling data in Google Sheets

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In this post I’ll provide an overview of how PayPal was integrated into AppSheet with the help of Google Apps Script. Even if you are not interested in payment integrations this post also hopefully pulls together useful tips, best practices and code patterns for reading/writing data to Google Sheets.

Hopefully this post illustrates not only just a method for integrating a PayPal payment processor into an AppSheet app, but also a method which can generally be used to extend AppSheet functionality with Google Apps Script powered Web Apps.

As a bonus you also get some of my top tips for interacting with data in Google Sheets including efficiently reading/writing data for multiple users without concurrent overwrites.

Source: AppSheet/PayPal integrated payment solutions and tips on handling data in Google Sheets

V8, Drive, Intermediate

Working with the Google Drive API Revisions history: Tips for handling revision merges with Google Apps Script

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Having spent quite a bit of time working with the Google Drive API Revisions resource in this post I thought it would be useful to share some of the lessons and solutions I’ve picked up along the way. For this I’ll be sharing code snippets for interacting with the Revisions resource with Google Apps Script, but the solutions discussed could easily be applied to your programming language of choice.

Source: Working with the Google Drive API Revisions history: Tips for handling revision merges

Snippet, Beginner

Automatically running a Google Apps Script function every quarter or another monthly period greater than one month 

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One of the great things about Google Apps Script is the way you can automate tasks. I’ve previously written about how I automate reporting and other examples like running backup processes. These usually run daily or once a month which is very straight forward to setup in Google Apps Script. If you want to run a script automatically every x number of months such as quarterly it gets a little harder. If you only want you script to run every three months … another option is to manage triggers programmatically which allows you to specify the date a function should be run again.

I’ve recently been revisiting some of my old Google Apps Script posts to do a bit of housekeeping. I thought this was a nice little snippet should you want to schedule a function to run on a time-driven trigger greater than one month. The trick used is to recursively create a time-driven trigger when the function is called. The solution comes with some caveats :)

Source: Running a Google Apps Script function every quarter or x months

Solutions, Forms, V8, Advanced

Google Apps Script developer notes on using the new Google Forms REST API

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Google recently announced the general availability of the new Google Forms API. For developers familiar with Google Apps Script for some time it has been possible to create, access, and modify Google Forms through the Forms Service. In this post I will highlight why Google Apps Script developers might want to use the new Forms API and some resources I’ve found useful for working with the new API in Apps Script projects. As part of this I’d like to share my experience of using the Forms API within a Google Forms Add-on and some factors to consider if you are particularly interested in watching for Google Form edits.

The Google Forms REST API provides an alternative method for managing Google Forms and responses. For Apps Script developers it is likely you’ll want to stick with using the Forms Service, but the new API is useful to know about as it opens up some new ways for managing, editing and watching Google Forms.

Source: Google Apps Script developer notes on using the new Google Forms REST API

Solutions, Gmail, Web App, Intermediate

Creating a ‘full fat’ RSS feed for Google Gmail labels with Google Apps Script

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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.

Source: Creating a ‘full fat’ RSS feed for Google Gmail labels (enabling some dark social judo)

Community News

A SyntaxHighlighter Evolved WordPress plugin for Google Apps Script contributors

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With my published content I like to include useful code snippets. As I published on a self-hosted WordPress blog I’ve used plugins to help format the code to make it easier to understand and also aesthetically look nice. In this post I share a WordPress plugin I’ve developed for Google Apps Script syntax highlighting.

Source: A SyntaxHighlighter Evolved WordPress plugin for Google Apps Script contributors