G Suite Developers Blog

Introducing Add-ons for Google Forms

October 23, 2014

Cross-posted from the Google Apps Updates blog.Formsnew theme choicesDocs and SheetsForms add-on store

formLimiter: Close your survey automatically, after a maximum number of responses is reached, or at a date and time of your choosing.

Ultradox Trigger: Create custom emails, reports, invoices, newsletters, etc., based on information that people enter into your form.

Form Values: Store and pull from lists that you use regularly in Forms, like a list of staff, students, rooms, resources or anything you want.

some documentationPosted by Saurabh Gupta, Product Manager

Reminder: ScriptDB is shutting down soon

October 13, 2014

Back in May, we announced that ScriptDB, an experimental database in Google Apps Script, would be turned off on November 20, 2014. Hopefully you've already migrated your data to another database, but if not, now is the time to check out alternatives like Cloud SQL. The migration guide explains how to export your data from ScriptDB.We’ve also improved the documentation for connecting to external databases through JDBC, makingit easier for you to set up Cloud SQL with Apps Script.
To summarize: ScriptDb will shut down on November 20, 2014, so please ensure you migrate your scripts before then!Posted by Saurabh Gupta, Product Manager, Google Apps Script

Updates on Authentication for Gmail IMAP, POP, and SMTP

October 6, 2014

Additional Scrutiny for Password Authentication previously announcedXOAUTH2 mechanismenable “Less Secure Apps”XOAUTH support ends May 5, 2015 deprecatedmigration guideXOAUTH2 documentation

Installable triggers in add-ons for Google Docs and Sheets

October 1, 2014

Update (Oct 17, 2014): Add-ons can now also use time-driven triggers.Earlier this yearadd-ons for Google Docs and Sheetsour add-on storeinstallable Apps Script triggers

Sheets add-ons can use the change, edit, open, and form-submit installable triggers.

Docs add-ons can use the (new!) open installable trigger.

Yet Another Mail Mergebe sure to check out the documentation

Sudoku, Linear Optimization, and the Ten Cent Diet

September 30, 2014

Originally posted on the Google Research blog. Cross posted on the Google Developers blogGeorge StiglerThe Cost of Subsistencelinear optimizationYouTube video stabilization systemGoogle Docs Sudoku add-onSCIP

Today we’re proud to announce two new ways for everyone to solve linear optimization problems. First, you can now solve linear optimization problems in Google Sheets with the Linear Optimization add-on written by Google Software Engineer Mihai Amarandei-Stavila. The add-on uses Google Apps Script to send optimization problems to Google servers. The solutions are displayed inside the spreadsheet. For developers who want to create their own applications on top of Google Apps, we also provide an API to let you call our linear solver directly.

Bruno de Backeror-tools suitefew exampleshereinstall the add-on firstSimplex algorithm

Enriched wheat flour

Liver

Cabbage

Spinach

Navy beans

Foie Linéaire à la Stigler

Posted by Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager

New Google Apps Activity API

September 25, 2014

This post was originally posted on the Google Developer Blog

Back in January, Google Drive launched an activity stream that shows you what actions have been taken on files and folders in your Drive. For example, if someone makes edits on a file you’ve shared with them, you’ll see a notification in your activity stream.
Today, we’re introducing the new Google Apps Activity API designed to give developers programmatic access to this activity stream. This standard Google API will allow apps and extensions to access the activity history for individual Drive files as well as descendents of a folder through a RESTful interface. The Google Apps Activity API will allow developers to build new tools to help users keep better track of what’s happening to specific files and folders they care about. For example, you might use this new API to help teachers see which students in their class are editing a file or, come tax season, you might want to create a quick script to audit the sharing of items in your financial information folder. Check out the documentation at https://developers.google.com/google-apps/activity/. We can't wait to see what you build! Posted by Justin Hicks, Software Engineer, Technical Lead for Google Apps Activity API

New features in Admin SDK: Custom user attributes, and opening up access to all domain users

September 23, 2014

[ed: This post originally appeared on the Google Developers Blog]

By Muzammil Esmail, Product Manager, Google for Work

The Admin SDK provides a comprehensive directory experience for Google for Work customers to help them meet specific business needs around data storage for customers. Here are some important updates to this SDK.
Custom attributes in the user’s profile Now available is a new feature in the Directory API which allows you to add custom attributes for your users. For instance, you could store the projects your users work on, their desk number, job level, hiring date — whatever makes sense for your business.
Once the custom attributes for your domain have been defined, they behave just like regular fields in the user profile. You can get and set them for your users and also perform searches on custom fields (e.g. “all employees that work on the shinyNewApp in Hyderabad”).
Custom attributes can be of different data types; they can be single- or multi-valued. You can configure whether they are “public” i.e. visible to everyone on the domain, or “private” i.e. visible only to admins and the users themselves.
Read access to all domain users Historically, only admins have been able to access the data in the Admin SDK. Beginning today, any user (not just admins) will now be able to call the Directory API to read the profile of any user on the domain (of course, we will respect ACLing settings and profile sharing settings).
We hope that you will be able to use this new feature to build business applications (e.g. corporate yellow pages, expense approval, vacation management, workflow applications, etc.) that can be used by all your users. Please feel free to go through our documentation to go learn more about the Admin SDK, and specifically the Directory API. Happy hacking!