AppsScriptPulse

Comment, Official News

How Google Workspace is delivering innovation for the future of hybrid work | Google Cloud Blog

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Google Workspace is the most popular productivity tool on the planet — relied on by more than 3 billion users. To help organizations thrive in a hybrid world, we’ve invested heavily in immersive connections, our approach to bringing people closer together through our communication products, and smart canvas, our next-generation collaboration experience, while enhancing our cloud-first security model to help people work safer.

Today is the first day of Google Cloud Next ’22 and this flagship event is being used to announce a number of upcoming features for Google Cloud and Workspace. This post (source link at the end) from the Google Cloud blog gives a summary of some of the key announcements including:

  • Bringing people together with immersive connections – which announces a number of new features being introduced to enhance Google Meet, the much requested feature to include inline threaded conversations in Google Chat as well as broadcast only Chat spaces
  • Collapsing the boundaries between people and apps with smart canvas – which highlights updates, mainly to Google Docs, to enhance productivity with custom building block and user defined variables. Google Sheets is also getting some smart chips enhancements including smart chips data extraction and third party integration as well as a new timeline view rolling out this month
  • Work safer with Google – a reiteration of Google’s commitment to security with updates on data loss prevention being extended to Google Chat, Trust rules in Drive and client side encryption for Gmail and Calendar
  • Extending the power of Workspace – the one perhaps of most interest to Pulse readers are the opportunities to build on Google Workspace with additional APIs for Meet and Chat, a Meet add-on SDK to third party integrations directly in Meet, and an official Google Chat integration from AppSheet apps.

For some of these announcements you’ll have to wait until 2023 at the earliest to get your hands on them. For a wider narrative and to see how the tech press is responding to today’s Google Cloud Next ’22 announcements here are some stories that have caught my eye:

Source: How Google Workspace is delivering innovation for the future of hybrid work | Google Cloud Blog

Solutions, V8, Beginner

How to create a Trello card using Google Apps Script

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Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

If you are a Google Workspace and Trello power user like me, I’m sure the thought has come across your mind of connecting your Google Apps to Trello, but every time you search for a solution you get an ad for Zapier or IFTTT. I try to avoid these solutions because they are great at making an initial connection, but if you ever want to do anything advanced, it will require you to sign up for a premium subscription. After searching and not finding answers, I decided just to try and build it for myself.

If you are a beginner to Google Apps Script this is a nice tutorial if you are interested in learning about connecting with other services, in this case Trello. Hopefully this post also illustrates that coding aspect of connecting with other services using Google Apps Script can be straightforward once access had been setup on the third party site.

Source: How To Create a Trello Card from Apps Script

Solutions, Sheets, V8, Beginner

An automatic random team maker using Google Apps Script

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In this post, we’re going to look at a script to be able to make even teams from a selection of players. I play football every Sunday and every week my friends sign up to play and most weeks there are different players playing, so we end up having to make the teams, and trying to do it as fairly as we can, which inevitably takes some time.

Nice ‘weekend project’ from Baz Roberts highlighting how Google Apps Script can be used to do a weighted random shuffle of data. The post includes a line-by-line explanation of what the script is doing and a great resource if you are at the beginning of your Apps Script journey.

Source: Automatic Team Maker — Apps Script (also available on bazroberts.com)

Community News, Video Tutorial

Live and pre-recorded tech talks for Google Workspace Admins

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Google Workspace Admins is an IT admin driven series of live and pre-recorded technical talks covering any and all topics that a Google Workspace Admin would find useful. We’ll cover topics that would benefit the Tier 1 IT help desk admin on up to the super admin and the CIO. Signup to get invited to all future events.

I’ve been a Google Workspace Admin for over a decade, mostly working on small domains. More recently my role requires me to support larger domains, often with enhanced security needs and the requirement to generally do everything on a bigger scale. This is where tools like GAM and Google Apps Script become essential to help with the heavy lifting.

Broadening the range of Google Workspace domains I support has also required me to broaden the channels and communities where I can learn and keep up-to-date. Recently, I was pointed to the Google Workspace Admins YouTube channel. Whilst this channel is relatively new it’s bursting with a wide range of technical focused solutions and discussions. Follow the link to subscribe to the channel and there is a form to get invited to all future events.

Source: Google Workspace Admins

Solutions, Drive, V8, Advanced

Efficient file management using batch requests with Google Apps Script 

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Google Drive alone can handle small file management jobs, but for larger batches of files, it can be too much for a simple Drive script to manage. With Google Apps Script, even large batches can be executed within 6 minutes, offering businesses the monetary and time benefits of efficient file management. This report looks at how Google Apps Script improves file management with batch requests, judging its efficacy by measuring the benchmark.

We’ve regularly highlighted work from Kanshi Tanaike in Pulse and it’s nice to see it also being highlighted in the official Google Cloud Blog. I’m sure many Google Workspace developers, like me, have encountered issues with managing large volumes of Google Drive files. In the post Kanshi Tanaike highlights how batch methods can be used to greatly speed up the process when interacting with the Google Drive API.

Source: Efficient File Management using Batch Requests with Google Apps Script | Google Cloud Blog

New IDE, Official News

Updated Apps Script integrated development environment will replace the legacy experience by Q4 2022 | Release Notes  |  September 27, 2022

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Apps Script has turned down the legacy integrated development environment (IDE) in favor of the redesigned IDE that launched in December 2020.

Google have announced the updated Apps Script editor will replace the legacy experience by Q4 2022. Whilst the new IDE was a huge step forward there are some core features from the old Script Editor, which will hopefully make it into the new IDE before Q4. The ones I hear most often are access previous script versions and search/replace across project script files. For the later in the meantime I recommend looking at the Black Apps Script Chrome extension. Whilst this extension primarily enables a true dark mode it also lets you search across script files.

Source: Release Notes  |  Apps Script  |  Google Developers

Snippet, Intermediate

Reading Qualtrics survey details with Google Apps Script

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Use the Qualtrics API to connect with a Survey and get its details.

Qualtrics API Survey details

Qualtrics API Survey details

Most of the complexity with this simply comes in getting the correct syntax for connecting to the Qualtrics API. This Get Survey Qualtrics webpage provides a little bit more technical detail for what exactly is sent/received.

You will need to complete the 3 pieces of information at the top of the Apps Script code for your own setup:

  1. API Token from the Qualtrics website,
  2. ID of the Survey you want the details of,
  3. Your Data Center ID.

Source: The Gift of Script: Get Qualtrics Survey details

Solutions, Chat, Beginner

Google Chat Apps for Google Apps Script Developers

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In this article, we will look at Google Chat Apps and go over some of the basics of developing a chat app with Google Apps Script.

Scott Donald provides a comprehensive overview of everything you need to know to get started with Google Chat app development with Google Apps Script.

One of the nice things about Google Chat app development is there are a number of different implementation architectures you can use, including Google Apps Script. Regardless of the architecture you choose there are some common steps such as GCP setup, receiving/responding to messages and using dialogues and card interfaces all covered in Scott’s post. Click through to find out more…

Source: Google Chat Apps for Google Apps Script Developers – Yagisanatode

Official News, Solutions, Video Tutorial

Google launches a YouTube channel dedicated to Google Workspace development

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Welcome to the Google Workspace Developers YouTube Channel, where developers of all types can learn about building solutions with Google Workspace. Explore the full range of the Google Workspace Platform from Apps Script to Chat Apps to Workspace APIs and more. Leverage Google Workspace’s products such as Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, and many more to customize, integrate, or extend these products with our developer tools. Visit our website → developers.google.com/workspace

Google has just launched a new YouTube channel dedicated to Google Workspace developers. Google Apps Script community members might recognise the first featured video series on the ‘Anatomy of Google Chat apps’, which is presented by Chanel Greco who recently joined the Google Workspace Developer Relations team. As well as featuring a curated collection of previous Google content on topics from no to low code solutions the channel also includes content from the wider community.

Source: Google Workspace Developers

Official News

Google Workspace sessions not to miss at Google Cloud Next | Google Cloud Blog

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Join us online or in-person at Google Cloud Next ’22, our flagship event where over 1 million people across the globe come together to learn and grow.  Don’t miss out on meeting other IT and security professionals, developers, and business leaders. Learn about the latest product announcements and hear valuable insights from Google executives, including Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud CEO,  and Aparna Pappu, VP and GM for Google Workspace. You’ll also hear inspiring stories from our global customers, such as Airbus and Iron Mountain,  and technology partners like Asana, about how they’re using Google Workspace in their organizations.

A recent post on the Google Cloud blog highlights the Google Workspace lineup of keynotes and sessions not to miss at Next ’22. There are a range of sessions from Google, global customers and partners.

Source: Google Workspace sessions not to miss at Google Cloud Next | Google Cloud Blog