Originally posted to the Google Apps Developer blog

Posted by Edward Jones, Software Engineer, Google Apps Script and Wesley Chun, Developer Advocate, Google Apps

Have you ever wanted a server API that modifies cells in a Google Sheet, to execute a Google Apps Script app from outside of Google Apps, or a way to use Apps Script as an API platform? Today, we’re excited to announce you can do all that and more with the Google Apps Script Execution API.

The Execution API allows developers to execute scripts from any client (browser, server, mobile, or any device). You provide the authorization, and the Execution API will run your script. If you’re new to Apps Script, it’s simply JavaScript code hosted in the cloud that can access authorized Google Apps data using the same technology that powers add-ons. The Execution API extends the ability to execute Apps Script code and unlocks the power of Docs, Sheets, Forms, and other supported services for developers.

One of our launch partners, Pear Deck, used the new API to create an interactive presentation tool that connects students to teachers by converting slide decks into interactive experiences. Their app calls the Execution API to automatically generate a Google Doc customized for each student, so everyone gets a personalized set of notes from the presentation. Without the use of Apps Script, their app would be limited to using PDFs and other static file types. Check out the video below to see how it works.

Bruce McPherson, a Google Developer Expert (GDE) for Google Apps, says: “The Execution API is a great tool for enabling what I call ‘incremental transition’ from Microsoft Office (and VBA) to Apps (and Apps Script). A mature Office workflow may involve a number of processes currently orchestrated by VBA, with data in various formats and locations. It can be a challenge to move an entire workload in one step, especially an automated process with many moving parts. This new capability enables the migration of data and process in manageable chunks.” You can find some of Bruce’s sample migration code using the Execution API here.

The Google Apps Script Execution API is live and ready for you to use today. To get started, check out the developer documentation and quickstarts. We invite you to show us what you build with the Execution API!

Posted by Saurabh Gupta, Product Manager

Back in 2014, we introduced add-ons for Google Docs, Sheets, and Forms in developer preview. Since then, the developer community has built a wide variety of features to help millions of Docs, Sheets and Forms users become more productive. Over the last few months, we launched a number of developer-friendly features that made it easier to build, test, deploy and distribute add-ons. Some key capabilities include:

• Ability to publish add-ons in Google Apps Marketplace
• Ability to bundle your add-on with existing Apps Marketplace listing
• Availability of Apps Script triggers in add-ons
• Testing tools for add-ons
• Using standalone scripts to publish add-ons
• Option to use your own Google Developers console project
• Iframe sandbox mode for faster UI

With these features under our belt, we are ready to graduate add-ons out of developer preview. Starting today, any developer can publish an add-on. To ensure users find the best tools for them, every new add-on will undergo a review for adherence to our guidelines before it’s available in the add-ons store.

We can’t wait to see what you will build!

Posted by Cheryl Simon Retzlaff, Software Engineer on the Realtime API team

Originally posted to the Google Apps Developer blog

Real-time collaboration is a powerful feature for getting work done inside Google docs. We extended that functionality with the Realtime API to enable you to create Google-docs style collaborative applications with minimal effort.

Integration of the API becomes even easier with a new in memory mode, which allows you to manipulate a Realtime document using the standard API without being connected to our servers. No user login or authorization is required. This is great for building applications where Google login is optional, writing tests for your app, or experimenting with the API before configuring auth.

The Realtime debug console lets you view, edit and debug a Realtime model. To launch the debugger, simply execute gapi.drive.realtime.debug(); in the JavaScript console in Chrome.

Finally, we have refreshed the developer guides to make it easier for you to learn about the API as a new or advanced user. Check them out at https://developers.google.com/drive/realtime.

For details on these and other recent features, see the release note.

Since announcing BigQuery at Google IO last May, we’ve been very excited by the response and feedback we’ve received from the developer community, enterprises and academia. The one consistent request we heard from everyone is the ability to interactively analyze large volumes of data without having to worry about provisioning, maintaining and scaling infrastructure.

Today, we would like to announce the integration of BigQuery with Google Apps Script and Google Spreadsheets, a feature we first demoed at Google IO. With this integration users now have the power to query multi-billion row tables, visualize the results and share them with others. Below you can see a simple script that queries a sample dataset and plots the results. A simple tutorial is available here with more to come soon.

There was a big focus on developing software for businesses at Google I/O this year, centered around three themes: build and sell apps in the Marketplace, customize and extend Google's apps, and build your own apps for internal use. The news kicked off the day before Google I/O with the announcement of Gmail contextual gadgets and many enhancements for Google Apps Script, including JDBC support. Then during the keynote, we launched Google App Engine for Business and announced our collaboration with VMware, and continued with the announcement of Google Wave (Labs) availability in Google Apps and Exchange support in Android 2.2 (aka Froyo).


Altogether there were more than a dozen technical sessions focused on the enterprise and more than 20 Google Apps Marketplace vendors demoing in the Enterprise Developer Sandbox.

Here’s a recap of a few of the sessions below. You can find the videos and slides for these sessions on the linked session title:

• Scripting Google Apps for business process automation - Google’s Evin Levey showed off the latest developments from Google Apps Script, and explained how developers can use the tool to automate business processes.
  
  
• Reach new customers fast: Learn how to sell your cloud app on the Google Apps Marketplace - Google’s Scott McMullan was joined by Jay Simmons (Atlassian), Chuck Dietrich (SlideRocket) and Amit Kulkarni (Manymoon) to discuss best practices for launching an app in the Google Apps Marketplace. This session was followed by a technical overview of how developers integrate apps with the Marketplace.
  
  
• Building context-aware extensions for Gmail - Deep dive on Gmail contextual gadgets - Google recently launched Gmail contextual gadgets, allowing developers to intelligently surface their apps directly in the Gmail message UI based on the content of the message. In this session, Dan Holevoet of Google explained how to create and distribute these gadgets.
  
  
• Run corporate applications on Google App Engine? Yes we do. Google CIO Ben Fried and his team discussed how Google runs real-world business applications on App Engine, and gave practical advice on how enterprise IT developers can make App Engine work with firewalls, legacy systems and proprietary systems. We unveiled this video yesterday along with the rest of the App Engine videos, but are reiterating it here as this session is quite relevant to the enterprise.
  
  
• Making Freemium work - converting free users to paying customers - In this panel moderated by Google’s Don Dodge, venture capitalists Brad Feld, Dave McClure, Jeff Clavier, Matt Holleran and Joe Kraus discussed strategies for building free products that can be upgraded to paid versions.
  

You can also find all videos for Enterprise I/O 2010 sessions in this YouTube playlist.

We’re excited to see the great strides our enterprise developer community has made, and we're looking forward to seeing even more innovation and progress at next year’s I/O. We hope to see you then!

Posted by Ryan Boyd, Google Apps team

By Steven Saviano, Software Engineer

This post is one in a series that previews Google I/O, our biggest developer event in San Francisco, May 28-29. Over the next two months, we'll be highlighting sessions and speakers to give Google Code blog readers a better sense of what's in store for you at the event. - Ed.

Being a UI engineer, I usually expect the features I implement to have a little bit more visual interaction than a little green icon. However, while my team and I were implementing Google Docs Offline, the challenge was just that: how make the offline experience work seamlessly while just adding one icon.



Building Docs Offline was quite a challenge, and we pushed Gears to its limits to accomplish it. To give an idea of some of the complexities, Google Docs is one application that is comprised of 3 editors (documents, spreadsheets, and presentations) and 1 file management UI running across two domains (docs.google.com and spreadsheets.google.com). The domain challenges alone were significant challenges in our design - we are fully utilizing multiple cross-domain workers to synchronize documents, capture resources, and authenticate users.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that any of the servers can be running any version of the code and fall over at anytime?

Getting all of this to "just work" for users was tough, but necessary for a great user experience.

Wondering how you can take your applications offline? I'll be discussing all these issues in-depth at this year's Google developer conference, Google I/O. Come by and learn how to get your app its very own little green syncing icon.