Google Apps Script is a programming language and development environment running in Google Cloud. It allows you to easily extend Google services such as Gmail, Docs, Drive, create Chrome extensions, develop data connectors for Google Data Studio or create standalone web applications.
If your business runs on Google (you use Gmail as your corporate email and Google Drive as your main data storage), Google Apps Script can make your daily tasks (especially repetitive ones) easier.
Google Apps Script Principle
Google Apps Script is de facto macros (sequences of actions) on steroids. Because they run in the Cloud, they can connect to virtually any service via APIs. At the same time, connecting to Google services using a native library is usually a matter of a few lines of code.
Imagine a situation where, after submitting a form, you want to send the user an email with instructions and a map, attach an invoice and enter everything into a spreadsheet or database – there’s nothing easier than using Google Apps Script.
If you use Google Workspace, you can use all the features of Google Apps Script for free. For more complex implementations, it is important to connect to a Google Cloud project.
Why do we use Google Apps Script?
Google Apps Script is built on JavaScript. This widely-used programming language has a huge community, lots of tutorials, and a variety of uses ranging from simple automation, to linking multiple data sources, to basic processing of smaller amounts of data.
You can easily prototype individual automations in the environment and verify that they will actually help with the problem before creating a production solution. Google Apps Script is also available for beginners, making it an interesting place to start programming in JavaScript.
Here are some examples of what we’ve already managed to automate in Google Apps Script:
- Automated reporting of data from various systems
- Visualization of data from specific systems
- Regular downloading of small amounts of data to Google Sheets
- Automation of forms
- Auxiliary formatting functions and templates for Google Docs
- Automation of Google Analytics documentation and setup
- Automation of Google Tag Manager documentation and setup
- Data connector for Google Data Studio
- Creating form applications used at the checkout counters in retail branches
- Tracking data projects (monitoring, alerts) and transferring data between systems
Is your business running on Google Cloud – like ours? Then why not take advantage of the automation and assistance that Google Apps Script gives you. Contact us today and let’s talk about your project.
