We’re updating the user interface for comments and action items in the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps for Android. Some of the changes you may notice include:
Larger, clearer interface to make it easier to see comments and their context in a document.
Shortcuts and gestures to help you quickly scroll through and respond to multiple comments.
Quick access button to reply, “@” mention someone, and assign action items.
Who’s impacted
End users
Why it matters
Commenting is a powerful way to collaborate on documents while remote. Comments can help you ask questions, document discussions, make sure other users see something, assign action items, and more. They’re particularly useful when working remotely, enabling multiple users to be part of discussions whenever and wherever it's convenient for them.
Getting started
Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
End users: This feature will be ON by default. To get started, tap on a comment when using the Docs, Sheets, or Slides app on an Android device. Use the Help Center to learn more about using comments and action items on Android.
We’re updating the interface which tells users about the file save status and whether they’re working online or offline in Google Docs editors and Drawings. The changes will help users understand where the file is saved, whether they’re connected to the network, and if the file is available to edit offline.
This is an update to the interface only - there are no changes in the underlying functionality. The changes you may notice include:
A new location for document save status next to the document name.
More descriptive text to indicate whether a document is saved to the cloud (when online) or to the device (offline).
A new way to enable offline by clicking on the document status icon. Previously, you had to go to File > Make available offline.
For users in domains where admins have turned off Docs editors offline access, we will adjust the message shown to users in order to minimize confusion regarding settings controlled by their admin.
We’re updating the interface you use to share files from Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms on the web. This will replace the previous interface used to share files and manage members of shared drives. These changes will make it easier to share files only with specific people without expanding access beyond what’s needed.
Who’s impacted
End users
Why it matters
Sharing files is critical to collaboration. This is especially true now, as more workforces are remote and collaborating on files from different locations. By making it easier to share files with specific people, we hope to improve collaboration while reducing the risk of access by unwanted users.
Additional details
We’ve made several changes to the sharing experience. These make it easier to perform common tasks, avoid accidental permission changes, and quickly see who has access to a file. Specifically you may notice:
Separated, task-focused interface: The new sharing dialog highlights essential user tasks like sharing a file, changing permissions, and viewing file access. The redesign also visually separates sharing with people and groups from link-sharing.
Quick “copy link” button: We’ve added a “copy link” button to make it easier to get the link without changing link permissions.
Easily see current access: The new interface more clearly shows who currently has access to the item, making it easier to quickly audit and change permissions.
The new sharing interface for Google Drive and Docs editors files
The old sharing interface for Google Drive and Docs editors files
Getting started
Admins: This change will take place by default. There is no admin control for this feature.
We’ve added two additional parameters to filter and sort cells by in Google Sheets:
Text color
Fill (background) color
Along with sorting by values and conditions, these filters make it easier and faster to find and surface relevant data in Sheets. This feature will be available on mobile and web.
Getting started
Admins: No admin action required for this feature.
End users: This feature will be available by default. To use this feature, select Filter > Filter by Color and then select “Fill color” or “Text color”. Matching cells will be display at the top of the range. Visit the Help Center to learn more. Use our Help Center to learn more about sorting and filtering data in Sheets.
Filtering by fill color, then text color.
Rollout pace
Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 11, 2020
Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 23, 2020
Availability
Available to all G Suite customers and users with personal Google Accounts
We’re improving the way data is suggested and how data is selected when creating a chart in Google Sheets. It’s now easier to locate and select the data you need when creating a dashboard over a dataset with slicers, pivot tables, charts, and more.
Who’s impacted
End users
Why you’d use it
When creating reports in Sheets, it’s common to create multiple charts from the same data table, but using different column ranges. Previously, all data ranges on a table would be used when creating a chart. Now, you’ll be able to select which columns to use for the chart axis and series. This allows you to quickly customize your charts so that they display the most relevant data.
Getting started
Admins: There is no admin action required for this feature.
End users: This feature will be available by default. In the chart editor, you can select a column as the X-axis and under “Series” you can select additional columns to populate your chart.
Rollout pace
Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 10, 2020.
Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 30, 2020
Availability
Available to all G Suite customers and users with personal Google accounts
Editor’s Note: Guest authors Diego Moreno and Sophia Deng (@sophdeng) are from Gigster, a firm that builds dynamic teams made of top global talent who create industry-changing custom software.
Prelude: Data input & management … three general choices
Google Cloud provides multiple services for gathering and managing data. Google Forms paired with Google Sheets are quite popular as they require no engineering resources while being incredibly powerful, providing storage of up to 5 million rows of data and built-in analytics for small team projects.
At the other end of the spectrum, to support a high volume of users or data, Google Cloud provides advanced serverless platforms like Google App Engine (web app-hosting) and Google Cloud Functions (function/service-hosting) that can use Google Cloud Firestore for fast and scalable data storage. These are perfect for professional engineering teams that need autoscaling to respond to any level of user traffic and data input. Such apps can also be packaged into a container and deployed serverlessly on Google Cloud Run.
However, it's quite possible your needs are right in-between. Today, we're happy to present the Gigster story and their innovative use of Google Apps Script—a highly-accessible service conventionally relegated to simple macro and add-on development, but which Gigster used to its advantage, building robust systems to transform their internal operations. Apps Script is also serverless, meaning Gigster didn't have to manage any servers for their application nor did they need to find a place to host its source code.
The Gigster story
Gigster enables distributed teams of software engineers, product managers and designers to build software applications for enterprise clients. Over the past five years, Gigster has delivered thousands of projects, all with distributed software teams. Our group, the Gigster Staffing Operations Team, is responsible for assembling these teams from Gigster’s network of over 1,000 freelancers.
Two years ago, our team began building custom software to automate the multi-stage and highly manual team staffing process. Building internal software has allowed the same-size Staffing Operations Team (3 members!) to enjoy a 60x reduction in time spent staffing each role.
The Apps Script ecosystem has emerged as the most critical component in our toolkit for building this internal software, due to its versatility and ease of deployment. We want to share how one piece of the staffing process has evolved to become more powerful over time thanks to Apps Script. Ultimately, we hope that sharing this journey enables all types of teams to build their own tools and unlock new possibilities.
End-to-end automation in Google Sheets
Staffing is an operationally intensive procedure. Just finding willing and able candidates requires numerous steps:
Gathering and formatting customer requirements.
Communicating with candidates through multiple channels.
Logging candidate responses.
Processing paperwork for placement
To add complexity, many of these steps require working with different third-party applications. For awhile, we performed every step manually, tracking every piece of data generated in one central Sheet (the “Staffing Broadcast Google Sheet”). At a certain point, this back-and-forth work to log data from numerous applications became unsustainable. Although we leveraged Google Sheets features like Data Validation rules and filters, the Staffing Broadcast Sheet could not alleviate the high degree of manual processes that were required of the team.
The centralized Staffing Broadcast Google Sheet provided organization, but required a high degree of manual entry for tracking candidate decisions.
The key transformation was integrating Sheets data with third-party APIs via Apps Script. This enabled us to cut out the most time-consuming operations. We no longer had to flip between applications to message candidates, wait for their replies, and then manually track responses.
To interact with these APIs, we built a user interface directly into the Staffing Broadcast Google Sheet. By introducing an information module, as well as drop-down lists and buttons, we were able to define a small set of manual actions versus the much wider list of tasks the tool would perform automatically across multiple applications.
By integrating Google Apps Script with third-party APIs and creating a user interface, we evolved the Staffing Broadcast Tool to centralize and automate almost every step of the staffing process.
doPost() is the key function in our staffing tool that facilitates third-party services triggering our Apps Script automations. Below is a snippet of how we listened to candidates' responses from a third-party messaging application. In this case, queueing the third-party message in a Google Sheet so it can be processed with improved error-handling.
/** * Receive POST requests and record to queue. */ doPost(e) { var payload = e.postData.contents; SpreadsheetApp.openById(SPREADSHEET_ID) .getSheetByName("Unprocessed") .appendRow([payload]); return ContentService.createTextOutput(""); // Return 200 }
Almost all manual work associated with finding candidates was automated through the combination of integrations with third-party APIs and having a user interface to perform a small, defined set of actions. Our team’s day-to-day became shockingly simple: select candidates to receive messages within the Staffing Broadcast Tool, then click the “Send Broadcast” button. That’s it. The tool handled everything else.
Leveraging Sheets as our foundation, we fundamentally transformed our spreadsheet into a custom software application. The spreadsheet went from a partially automated datastore to a tool that provided an end-to-end automated solution, requiring only the click of a few buttons to execute.
Evolution into a standalone application
While satisfied, we understood that having our application live in Google Sheets had its limitations, namely, it was difficult for multiple team members to simultaneously use the tool. Using doGet(), the sibling to doPost(), we began building an HTML frontend to the Staffing Broadcast Tool. In addition to resolving difficulties related to multiple users being in a spreadsheet, it also allowed us to build an easier-to-use and more responsive tool by leveraging Bootstrap & jQuery.
Having multiple users in a single Google Sheet can create conflicts, but Apps Script allowed us to build a responsive web app leveraging common libraries like Bootstrap & jQuery that eliminated those problems while providing an improved user experience.
When other teams at Gigster got wind of what we built, it was easy to grant access to others beyond the Staffing Operations Team. Since Apps Script is part of the G Suite developer ecosystem, we relied on Google’s security policies to help deploy our tools to larger audiences.
While this can be done through Google’s conventional sharing tools, it can also be done with built-in Apps Script functions like Session.getActiveUser() that allow us to restrict access to specific Google users. In our case, those within our organization plus a few select users.
To this day, we continue to use this third version of the Staffing Broadcast Tool in our daily operations as it supports 100% of all client projects at Gigster.
Conclusion
By fundamentally transforming the Staffing Broadcast Tool with Apps Script, Gigster’s Staffing Operations Team increased its efficiency while supporting the growth of our company. Inspired by these business benefits, we applied this application-building approach using Apps Script for multiple tools, including candidate searching, new user onboarding, and countless automations.
Our team’s psychological shift about how we view what we are capable of, especially as a non-engineering team, has been the most valuable part of this journey. By leveraging an already familiar ecosystem to build our own software, we have freed team members to become more self-sufficient and valuable to our customers.
To get started on your Apps Script journey, we recommend you check out the Apps Script Fundamentals playlist and the official documentation. And if you're a freelancer looking to build software applications for clients, we’re always looking for talented software engineers, product managers or designers to join Gigster’s Talent Network.
Thank you to Sandrine Bitton, the third member of the Staffing Operations Team, for all her help in the development of the Staffing Broadcast Tool.
Earlier this year, we announced the retirement of the Sheets v3 API. At that time, we stated that you’d need to migrate any applications built on the v3 API to the v4 API by March 3, 2020 to ensure they continue working properly.
We’re extending our timeline to allow developers additional time to migrate their applications:
Starting on April 9, 2020, the spreadsheet and spreadsheets.readonly scopes can no longer be used to list a user’s spreadsheets in the v3 API.
On September 30, 2020, the remainder of the v3 API will be turned down.
You can now “pull out” and highlight a slice from a pie or donut chart in Google Sheets. This feature gives you more ways to control the look of your charts and better display the most important data in Sheets.
You can now import and analyze data from Zendesk in Google Sheets with a new data connector. This add-on is now available in the G Suite Marketplace.
Who’s impacted
End users
Why you’d use it
Many organizations rely on Zendesk for capturing and taking action on support, customer service, and customer engagement. With the Data Connector for Zendesk, you can use it to configure and save valuable query configurations and load corresponding data into Google Sheets for analysis.
With the add-on, you can search against tickets in Zendesk (and return data to Sheets from that search), list tickets and metrics, load previous searches, and refresh query results already in your spreadsheet.
When creating a new search, you can select the fields you’d like to import to Sheets and set query conditions.
