Author Archives: Google Apps Developer Blog Editor

Your emails, optimized for every screen with responsive design

Posted by Pierce Vollucci, Associate Product Manager, Gmail and Steve Bazyl, Developer Programs Engineer, Google Apps

When you send emails, your recipients might read them on a computer, tablet, or phone—or more likely, all three. However your message might look different on all these devices. Later this month, you’ll be able to use CSS media queries with Gmail to ensure that your message is formatted the way you intended, whether it's viewed on a computer, a phone in portrait mode, or a tablet in landscape mode. You’ll be able to change styles based on width, rotation, and resolution, allowing for more responsive formatting to optimize your email for every device.

Example of an email before and after responsive design

In discussions with email designers, these supported CSS rules were identified as the most useful media queries to support responsive design. This is just one part of an overall effort to expand CSS support in Gmail and to give email designers more control over how their messages are rendered. For example, the CSS below applies the color red when the screen width exceeds 500px. 

@media screen and (min-width: 500px) {
  .colored {
    color:red;
  }
}

You can find the full list of supported CSS rules in the developer documentation. We hope this reference helps you create more feature-rich, responsive email for users. Happy formatting!

Bringing Google Apps into HipChat

Google Calendar and Google Drive for Atlassian HipChat

Guest post by Rich Manalang, Partner Engineering Lead at Atlassian. Posted by Wesley Chun, Developer Advocate, Google Apps.

Atlassian has been building collaboration software for over 14 years. With products that include JIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket, and HipChat, our organization has learned a lot about how teams work effectively.

HipChat launched the Connect API in November 2015, and since then we’ve continued to build upon our ecosystem of integrations and collaborations. A few months ago, our team looked at potential integrations that would be a perfect marriage with HipChat — and today, we’re excited to share the Google Calendar and Google Drive integration for HipChat.

Millions of people use Google’s products everyday, so we instantly knew this was the right opportunity. Many of HipChat’s customers are developers, and they told us that managing time and better access to files were two of the most important things in their day-to-day. Now with Google integrations available inside of HipChat, there’s no need to launch another browser tab or app.

By building Google Calendar directly into HipChat, we’re improving the signal-to-noise ratio on a daily basis. Before this integration, we all dealt with context-switching between apps and browser tabs. Now, customers can use HipChat to view and share various calendars, schedules and important dates in the right sidebar. Our customers spend their entire working day inside our HipChat app — unlike email, you don’t just fire it up and quit periodically. So naturally, having your calendar up-front is compelling. And what’s more, you can slice and dice which ones you see on a per-room basis. Say you’re a program manager — if you go into the Engineering HipChat “room,” you can see the Engineering and related calendars. Then, when you switch into the Marketing room, you may see different calendars depending on whom you’re collaborating with.

Having dual calendars front and center within HipChat is critical for staying on top of my work. I’m personally very excited about the Google Calendar integration because it’s one of the most important apps I use day-in and day-out. As a single parent with two kids busy at school, I need to know everything that's going on. My calendar is stacked, and I want to see it all at a glance. That urgency is similar when considering the most important documents in someone's daily workflow.

When we started working on the Google Drive integration, we wanted to focus on what was most important — accessibility, shareability, and ease of use.

There are many benefits to bringing third party integrations right into HipChat. The Google Drive integration allows teams to collaborate and work together while saving time and eliminating context switching. Being able to access documents, presentations, and files is critical whether a user is at the office or remote. It integrates nicely into the right side bar, enabling users to access, share to the room, and collaborate around important documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. We worked with third party developer Topdox, who was a tremendous partner in bringing this new feature into HipChat. We’re getting great feedback around the speed and simplicity of sharing files without ever having to leave the HipChat application.

Why would Google Developers be interested?

When we built these integrations, we wanted to give our users a nice balance between out-of-the-box usefulness but also ultimate flexibility in which calendars and accounts a user can view. To do that, we wanted one UI that can display multiple calendars from multiple Google accounts — similar to what most Calendar mobile apps do today, including Google’s own mobile Calendar app.

These new integrations were built entirely on top of Google’s API. Google’s Calendar API is a full featured API that gave us everything we needed to create a calendar experience fit for HipChat’s users. On top of that, the API was designed with efficiency in mind with push notifications for changes to resources and incremental syncing to improve performance and bandwidth use.

Building on top of Google APIs has allowed us to think of new ways to bring even tighter integrations with our products along with the myriad of add-ons built by Atlassian’s ecosystem. One idea under consideration is to link JIRA Software and Google Calendar so that all your JIRA issues are overlayed onto a Google Calendar. Then this calendar can be shared with the relevant HipChat room bringing it all together and enabling teams to get more done. We’d love to hear your feedback on this idea.

We think there are many opportunities to improve how teams work together by integrating with Google and Atlassian. You can find out more about Atlassian Connect on our developer’s site and the Google APIs on theirs.

Google Apps Marketplace is opening up to consumer end-users

Posted by Chris Han, Product Manager, Apps Developer Platform

For over 6 years, the Google Apps Marketplace has been the #1 destination for administrators and business users within Google Apps domains to find, discoverand install third-party apps and integrations that extend what they can do with Google Apps.

We are happy to announce that over the next few weeks, we are opening up the Google Apps Marketplace to consumer end-users, and wanted to give you a heads up as well as some technical guidance should you wish to make any changes or tweaks to your app. Here is what you need to know if you are a technology partner or developer building for the Google Apps Marketplace:

First, this change only applies to apps which have opted in to “Enable Individual Install” on the Google Apps Marketplace SDK located in the Developer Console. Apps not enabled with individual install will not appear to consumers, nor will they be installable for them.

Second, as a general best practice, we recommend that you do not use a user’s email address as a unique identifier. Email addresses for both consumer and business accounts can be renamed or changed. Make sure to always use the Google Account ID. For more information on sign in and security, please read this.

If you have questions or have any feedback regarding this development, please let us know here. We look forward to exposing what you’ve built to our broader community.

Saying Goodbye to the GData Admin Settings API

Posted by Shashank Gupta, Product Manager, Google Apps for Work and Wesley Chun, Developer Advocate, Google Apps

Back in 2013, we launchedthe Google Apps Admin SDK, and later announced as a result that several outdated Apps Admin APIs would be deprecated and shut down in April 2015. Today, we are continuing this effort of removing older, less-used functionality by announcing the deprecation of the GData Admin Settings API. Some GData API functionality will find a replacement from an Admin SDK counterpart, while other features will be discontinued. The following table summarizes which features will be retained (and where to access replacement functionality) and which won’t:

Admin Settings API

Endpoint

Post-Deprecation Replacement (if any)

General Settings

/defaultLanguage

Customer API

/organizationName

Customer API

/currentNumberOfUsers

no replacement / discontinued

/maximumNumberOfUsers

no replacement / discontinued

Account Settings

/accountInformation/supportPIN

no replacement / discontinued

/accountInformation/customerPIN

no replacement / discontinued

/accountInformation/adminSecondaryEmail

Customer API

/accountInformation/edition

no replacement / discontinued

/accountInformation/creationTime

Customer API

/accountInformation/countryCode

Customer API

Appearance Settings

All endpoints

no replacement / discontinued

Verification Settings

All endpoints

no replacement / discontinued

Single Sign-on (SSO) Settings

All endpoints

replacement API coming soon

Gateway and Routing Settings

All endpoints

no replacement / discontinued

To summarize, the GData Admin Settings API is being deprecated today and will remain operational for one year to give developers time to migrate. This means that on August 16, 2017, this deprecated API will be shut down. At that time, all calls to the API and any features in your applications that depend on it will no longer work. Please migrate as soon as possible.

Enhanced third-party access protection for Google Sheets

Posted by Tom Holman, Product Manager, Google Sheets and Josh Danziger, Software Engineer, Google Sheets

At Google, we are always working to keep our users' information safe. As part of these ongoing efforts, we will begin requiring explicit authorization when third-party sites request access to Google Sheets content via the Google Visualization API or Google Query Language.

For many developers, this change will be transparent, but others may need to make changes in order to continue reading spreadsheet data. For more details on the technical changes required, please visit the Google Charts API Documentation. We will begin enforcing these requirements on September 14, 2016.

If you have any questions or concerns about this change, please follow up in the Google Docs forum or on Stack Overflow.

Announcing Android add-ons for Docs and Sheets

Posted by By Saurabh Gupta, Product Manager, Google Apps

We know many of you consider your mobile device as your primary tool to consume business information, but what if you could use it to get more work done, from anywhere? We’re excited to introduce Android add-ons for Docs and Sheets, a new way for you to do just that—whether it’s readying a contract you have for e-signature from your phone, or pulling in CRM data on your tablet for some quick analysis while waiting for your morning coffee, Android add-ons can help you accomplish more.

Get more done with your favorite third-party apps, no matter where you are

We’ve worked with eight integration partners who have created seamless integrations for Docs and Sheets. Here’s a preview of just a few of them:
  • DocuSign - Trigger or complete a signing process from Docs or Sheets, and save the executed document to Drive. Read more here.
DocuSign lets you easily create signature envelopes right from Google Docs
  • ProsperWorks - Import your CRM data to create and update advanced dashboards, reports and graphs on Sheets, right from your device. Read more here.
  • AppSheet - Create powerful mobile apps directly from your data in Sheets instantly — no coding required. Read more here.
  • Scanbot - Scan your business documents using built-in OCR, and insert their contents into Docs as editable text. Read more here.


You can find these add-ons and many more, including PandaDoc, ZohoCRM, Teacher Aide, EasyBib and Classroom in our Google Play collection as well as directly from the add-on menus in Docs or Sheets.


Try them out today, and see how much more you can do.

Calling all developers: try our developer preview today!

As you can see from above, Android add-ons offer a great opportunity to build innovative integrations and reach Docs and Sheets users around the world. They’re basically Android apps that connect with Google Apps Script projects on the server-side, allowing them to access and manipulate data from Google Docs or Sheets using standard Apps Script techniques. Check out our documentation which includes UI guidelines as well as sample code to get you started. We’ve also made it easy for you to publish your apps with the Apps Script editor.

Android add-ons are available today as a developer preview. We look forward to seeing what you build!

Reminder: Turn down of Google Drive web hosting coming soon

Posted by Hodie Meyers, Product Manager, Google Drive and Steve Bazyl, Developer Programs Engineer, Google Apps

Last year, we announcedthe deprecation of Google Drive web hosting for users and developers, and that the service will be shut down on August 31, 2016. We’d like to remind remaining users that websites hosted via googledrive.com/host/[id] will become unavailable from that date.

For those who haven’t switched yet, please consider the following alternatives.

  • Google Drive API: If you’re using the web hosting feature to provide logged-in users access to public Drive items, you can use the API instead.
  • Firebase Hosting: If you’re using the web hosting feature to provide users access to static web pages whose content lives on Drive, you can migrate to Firebase by uploading the content to Firebase and serving pages via Firebase-specific URLs. Please see this video to learn more!

Gmail API: New endpoints for settings

Posted by Brandon Jewett-Hall, Software Engineer, Gmail and Wesley Chun, Developer Advocate, Google Apps

If you've been pining for a way to update your users' email signatures with a different inspirational quote each day or enable "Out of Office" auto-replies when their calendars are marked as busy, then you're in luck. Today, we're extending the Gmail APIwith new endpoints for managing settings. These new endpoints cover the following features:

  • Filters
  • Forwarding addresses and auto-forwarding
  • IMAP and POP settings
  • Send-as aliases
  • Signatures
  • Vacation responder

With this update, we're equipping developers with some new tools that have never been available in any previous Google API. These include the ability to:

  • Retrieve and update signatures for send-as aliases
  • Configure forwarding to external addresses
  • Configure send-as aliases that send mail through external providers
  • Use HTML in vacation messages
  • Manipulate settings for gmail.com accounts

Over time we'll continue to expand the API with additional settings features such as support for managing mailbox delegates, so stay tuned for more announcements.

Get started now

Most of the settings endpoints are available for any Google Apps or Gmail account, but a few sensitive operations, such as modifying send-as aliases or forwarding, are restricted to service accounts with domain-wide authority. See the reference docsfor more details and to get started.

What about the existing Email Settings API in the Admin SDK?

This update to the Gmail API effectively replaces the older Email Settings API, so we're also announcing its deprecation today and will turn it down fully on July 7, 2017. We've put together a migration guide to assist clients in porting their existing integrations over to their newer counterparts in the Gmail API. If you have any issues, check out the gmail-api tag on StackOverflow.

We look forward to seeing what you build with these new features in the Gmail API!

Introducing the Google Sheets API v4: Transferring data from a SQL database to a Sheet

Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, Google Apps

At Google I/O 2016, we launched a new Google Sheets API—click hereto watch the entire announcement. The updated API includes many new features that weren’t available in previous versions, including access to functionality found in the Sheets desktop and mobile user interfaces. My latest DevBytevideo shows developers how to get data into and out of a Google Sheet programmatically, walking through a simple script that reads rows out of a relational database and transferring the data to a brand new Google Sheet.

Let’s take a sneak peek of the code covered in the video. Assuming that SHEETS has been established as the API service endpoint, SHEET_ID is the ID of the Sheet to write to, and datais an array with all the database rows, this is the only call developers need to make to write that raw data into the Sheet:


SHEETS.spreadsheets().values().update(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID,
    range='A1', body=data, valueInputOption='RAW').execute()
Reading rows out of a Sheet is even easier. With SHEETS and SHEET_ID again, this is all you need to read and display those rows: 
rows = SHEETS.spreadsheets().values().get(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID,
    range='Sheet1').execute().get('values', [])
for row in rows:
    print(row)

If you’re ready to get started, take a look at the Python or other quickstarts in a variety of languages before checking out the DevByte. If you want a deeper dive into the code covered in the video, check out the post at my Python blog. Once you get going with the API, one of the challenges developers face is in constructing the JSON payload to send in API calls—the common operations samples can really help you with this. Finally, if you’re ready to get going with a meatier example, check out our JavaScript codelab where you’ll write a sample Node.js app that manages customer orders for a toy company, the database of which is used in this DevByte, preparing you for the codelab.

We hope all these resources help developers create amazing applications and awesome tools with the new Google Sheets API! Please subscribe to our channel, give us your feedback below, and tell us what topics you would like to see in future episodes!

Auto-generating Google Forms

Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, Google Apps

 
 function createForm() {  
   // create & name Form  
   var item = "Speaker Information Form";  
   var form = FormApp.create(item)  
       .setTitle(item);  
   
   // single line text field  
   item = "Name, Title, Organization";  
   form.addTextItem()  
       .setTitle(item)  
       .setRequired(true);  
   
   // multi-line "text area"  
   item = "Short biography (4-6 sentences)";  
   form.addParagraphTextItem()  
       .setTitle(item)  
       .setRequired(true);  
   
   // radiobuttons  
   item = "Handout format";  
   var choices = ["1-Pager", "Stapled", "Soft copy (PDF)", "none"];  
   form.addMultipleChoiceItem()  
       .setTitle(item)  
       .setChoiceValues(choices)  
       .setRequired(true);  
   
   // (multiple choice) checkboxes  
   item = "Microphone preference (if any)";  
   choices = ["wireless/lapel", "handheld", "podium/stand"];  
   form.addCheckboxItem()  
       .setTitle(item)  
       .setChoiceValues(choices);  
 }

If you’re ready to get started, you can find more information, including another intro code sample, in the Google Forms reference section of the Apps Script docs. In the video, I challenge viewers to enhance the code snippet above to read in “forms data” from an outside source such as a Google Sheet, Google Doc, or even an external database (accessible via Apps Script’s JDBC Service) to generate multiple Forms with. What are other things you can do with Forms?

One example is illustrated by this Google Docs add-on I created for users to auto-generate Google Forms from a formatted Google Doc. If you’re looking to do integration with a variety of Google services, check out this advanced Forms quickstart that uses Google Sheets, Docs, Calendar, and Gmail! Finally, Apps Script also powers add-ons for Google Forms. To learn how to write those, check out this Forms add-on quickstart.

We hope the DevByte and all these examples inspire you to create awesome tools with Google Forms, and taking the manual creation burden off your shoulders! If you’re new to the Launchpad Online developer series, we share technical content aimed at novice Google developers, as well as discuss the latest tools and features to help you build your app. Please subscribe to our channel, give us your feedback below, and tell us what topics you would like to see in future episodes!