What to invest in Google Workspace development in 2021
Introduction
If you are using Google Workspace environment to build solutions, either by work or personal stuffs, there are several options you can use to create your automations depending on your programming level, your needs or your convenience.
Totally Unscripted program showed the principal areas to build for GoogleWorkspace. I created a short summary of all the sessions, in few words your must invest your time in:
- Macros
- Add-ons development
- AppSheet
- Tables
- Chatbots
- BigQuery
Macros
If you are begginer in Apps Script, you can use Macros to stop doing the same task over and over. You can record a Macro without write all the lines of code. It is a good way to introduce yourself in the apps script world (you can see the autogenerated code in the script editor.
Here is a sample macro to format a google sheet.
Add-ons development
Either for a public or private app the add-on development is one thing that would increase in 2021. There are more support to come, more capabilities and interest in add-ons.
You should definetily invest time in cardService. Steven Bazyl gave a little demostration of this (no supported and experimental) framework.
The cardService gives the developers the possibility to create user interfaces with good consistensy, mobile support and accesibility with less code. You can get the final ui quicker.
As a cardService is new, a good point Steve mentioned is that google will not deprecate soon the legacy add-ons, and if you are creatinga new extension, it would be better if you look in cardService, if it doesn’t fit look for editor add-ons and if it doesn’t fit look for chrome extensions.
This video clarify some points about te differences between Editor Add-on and workspace Add-on.
AppSheet
Well, I think this is one of the most interesting new google products. As Praveen Seshadri says in the TU episode, “AppSeheet is a prodcut to build solutions without being a programer or writting code”. With this no-code platform anyone can create a secure apps quickly.
The advantages of AppSheet is that you can use the capabilities of your users phone’s to create more responsive solutions. You can use your camera, get signatures from your users, read QR and barcodes.
In Appsheet the ui is build your you. You just need to select between the different view types. Even a ‘relation’ diagram is build for you as you are creating your app. This is really helpful to understand your data.
In my short experience using Appsheet I can tell you that you can save a lot of time. I had an inventory app in App Maker (R.I.P.) and I created from 0 in AppSheet and was very fast, also adding mobile features and security was awesome.
Tables
Now is the turn of google Tables (The interrogant product ?)Google Tables is in beta mode and is just available for users in the U.S. google table is an easy way to create lightweight collaborative database. Is an experimental project to help users organize and automate their work.
To have a more complex explanation of google tables you can see the whole episode of TU with guests Carlin Yuen and Ben Collins. They show what Google Tables is and use cases. As you can see tables are more intuitive and visual than sheets.
I think this product has a lot of potencial, this could be use as a database or mor alike than google sheets. Therefore I recommend you to invest time in google tables.
Chatbots
They are getting popular and growing around the world. You can use bots to provide new funcionalities to google chat. Build bots for Google Workspace products can save you a lot of time. You can create a bot to allow people ask questions and the bot can retrieve information or trigger some scripts that you builded before.
There is a lab and resources in the apps script documentation that help you to create chatbots. Also there is a another lab in Qwiklabs that is very simple and guide you to create a Hangouts bot.
BigQuery
As your sheets grow they could present performance issues. There is where BigQuery fits. It allows you to store your data in google cloud, serverless with scalability assured. It is a SQL database in the cloud!
Although this is a paid service there is a free tier version. As long as you don’t exceed the limits you won’t pay anything.
Here is a demo showing how to use BigQuery to optimize operations.
Conclusion
One peak moment for apps script folks in 2020 was the launch of the new Apps Script IDE. It definitely will save us a lot of time, beyond that this tell us there will be Apps Script for a while.
Whatever your interests are for building projects withgoogle workspace on 2021 there are different type of products. Maybe you can give it a try in appsheet with nocode solutions. If it doesn’ fit your expectations, you can build an automation in apps script. If you expect a big project you could prototype win sheets and apps script but looking for App engine.
Thanks to Martin Hawskey, Steve Webster and Charles Maxson for the season 3 of Totally Unscripted. which gives us a roadmap of Google Apps Script.
Hope you a script year! 🎉
