18 ms·

Google Docs gets an API for task automation

594 points by Manu1987 8y ago

nathan_f77 8y ago
Oh wow, this is pretty cool. I was actually planning to build a Google Docs plugin for my PDF templating product [1], and the UI was going to be very similar. They seem have a pretty simple API with limited types and field validation, so maybe there's still room for a more powerful competitor (that also has support for e-signatures.) But it's really interesting to see how competitors evolve over time. Now HelloSign has been acquired by Dropbox, and Google Docs has launched their own document generation API. [1] https://formapi.io https://formapi.io
leesalminen 8y ago
One cool thing I did with the Google Drive API was pull in our app's release notes from Google Drive. This allows our product and support teams to write/edit release notes and have it "magically" appear in-app as HTML. The workflow is: 1.) Employee creates a GDoc in a known, shared folder 2.) Application pulls all GDocs from this shared folder 3.) Application uses GDrive API to convert the GDoc to HTML 4.) HTML is displayed to the end user. This proved to be an easy solution to having to involve a developer to fix a typo in a release note.
- nolite 8y ago
  I did something similar and hacky by just rendering the google drive links in an iframe in our app
- seanwilson 8y ago
  Do you have to worry about abuse of the API key used to pull in the doc or this isn't an issue (e.g. API call cost or going over a quota)?
  - leesalminen 8y ago
    We do 2 things: 1- the API keys are only used on our servers and not the device, so no new worries about the key getting out and abused 2- we cache the results of the API calls for 5-10 minutes with Redis. So there's no worries about the quota or rate limits. We've been doing this for about a year with 15,000 daily active users. When we publish a new release note roughly half read it within the first 24 hours. No issues to report.
intrasight 8y ago
I do a lot of Office automation. It's nice to know that similar can now be done with Google Docs.
- dvtrn 8y ago
  I found there to be a lot of demand in document automation especially in the real estate world. What's your experience been like, just wondering?
  - intrasight 8y ago
    I've done it on and off for about 15 years. I've done some in the real estate world as well. My experience in a nutshell: * You have to use server-side automation - which is unsupported, and probably even violates Microsoft's terms of use. * It's tricky. I use a serialized message queue to generate documents. * Microsoft was dang stupid to not support automation. Such lost opportunity. I doubt that Google's supporting automation is going to change Microsoft.
tylfin 8y ago
Do Google Doc features really impact the community enough warrant a post? Just seems like marketing to me.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Useful until it’s deprecated. If you need permanence/long term support, use Office and Microsoft’s tooling (instead of Google products).
  - DoubleCribble 8y ago
    The features of Docs and Word are more of a Venn diagram than a circle. One does not easily substitute for the other.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      I don’t think I need to expound on why one shouldn’t rely on Google Docs-specific features for business processes. Will the feature you need last longer than Wave? Or Inbox? Will you get a shutdown notice as bad as that for the Google+ API?
      - DoubleCribble 8y ago
        Maybe? But what's the average life expectancy of a particular workflow? As long as the feature outlives my workflow, I'm a happy camper.
        toomuchtodo 8y ago
        I can’t speak to workflow longevity. My assumption, based on enterprise work experience, is that corporations using Office 365 and MS Flow are going to prefer that workflow over Google Docs (and they’re probably already federated to Azure AD, making access control easy peasy). People want to derisk what they deliver, and want to keep their jobs. Microsoft delivers on that, Google does not. This isn’t about emotion, it’s about pragmatism.
efangs 8y ago
This will be nice until they take it away...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- riku_iki 8y ago
  Or change API and you need to rewrite all your code..
  - chillacy 8y ago
    Google is pretty good about API versioning I've found. Likely they will release a V2 and deprecate V1 at some point.
- judge2020 8y ago
  Since this is GSuite-focused, It likely won't be removed without a long period of prior notice.
- nikolay 8y ago
  Yeah, they gave us enough reasons not to integrate them into our daily lives. Keep off!
- matz1 8y ago
  Nothing last forever, especially in tech, you should always have backup plan.
- shaki-dora 8y ago
  If only this tired meme would die as fast as a Google product...
abraae 8y ago
We spent a lot of time and money building a document generation add-on to our platform. It seems that money might have been better used elsewhere!
- gcatalfamo 8y ago
  Did you look into it already? I have yet to understand what new stuff is there and what old stuff has just been repackaged into "office automation"
  - abraae 8y ago
    Our use case is replacing placeholders inside documents with generated values, removing or adding entire sections, and exporting to pdf. Looks like that is all possible.
hawkjo 8y ago
Does this mean managed bibliographies will finally become a reality in google docs? That’s the only thing keeping me from using it much.
legitster 8y ago
They will have a lot of catchup to do to get where Office is now. I'm frankly amazed by how good Microsoft Flow has been. So many dumb business processes rely on an Excel doc somewhere, or a stupid manual email somewhere else. But with Flow I've seen just a single smarty-pants able to fully streamline an entire department one rule at a time. They don't need to get permission to bring in a new logo - it's part of Office, they can just do it. And no one has to get dragged into it kicking and screaming - you want to work off of an Excel file? Fine! It's still there! It feels like a hit of Agile steroids for an older organization.
- kfk 8y ago
  Is it still very desktop centric as all MS Office products? Because if it is you will struggle to keep up with the amount of data, report and automation that need to run on top of various cloud applications.
  - legitster 8y ago
    Office is getting to (but not quite at) that sweet spot of "it just works". So long as you save into your Onedrive a lot of that is magically taken care of. And then you get that one user who takes the collaborative document, downloads it to their desktop, then emails everyone a revision.
    - johnwalkr 8y ago
      > And then you get that one user who takes the collaborative document, downloads it to their desktop, then emails everyone a revision. This is a constant struggle for me. It took about 3 years, but I had most of our company using google docs and not working locally much. Then a critical mass of newcomers came and the IT department decided we should move away from google docs and so provided a file server. A year later, a few people of us are stubbornly using google docs but 80% of our files are scattered across the fileserver and desktops. And you can be sure that whatever you find on the fileserver is not the latest version. While I’m on a rant, the same people refuse to use commenting features and instead add red text and text boxes all over the place.
jacquesm 8y ago
I wished they would spend time on fixing bugs, Google docs has so many subtle bugs it is a very annoying product to use. Of course you could argue that you could do both new features and fix bugs but with budgets (even for Google) finite and new features not as critical as fixing existing issues I would love for the priority to be given to bug fixes. Pet peeve: it is impossible to do a wysiwyg document in Google docs, it will come out subtly different on almost every computer/browser combo and in the end will come out different again when exported as a PDF resulting in endless cycles of revisions.
- jiveturkey 8y ago
  the entire productivity suite is very much an MVP product. the killer feature is real-time collaborative work, for that aspect it's actually quite good IMHO. then for sheets, being able to work in "apps script" is fantastic. apparently you can use typescript in excel with some third party tools but surely they all stink in some way, and won't product portable documents. and anyway, VB is ok enough and has its own strengths. otherwise, Office completely blows away google apps.
  - Scarbutt 8y ago
    Excel is adding JS support: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/excel/custom-functions-overview https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/excel/cu...
    - ec109685 8y ago
      That seems better than google’s version given it seems like the function will act like just another built in.
- andyroid 8y ago
  Definitely agree on how annoying that is, but as far as I know no one has really pulled off client side rendering in any way looking even close to equal on all browsers and platforms. I know I spent years on another project trying to do just that before resigning to render the final result (PDF in this case) server side - so at least _that_ was consistent, albeit unfortunately not with the expectations one has from having seen the client side rendering before.
ryeguy_24 8y ago
I've been looking for a sophisticated way to automatically generate documents for a while (formulas, data tables) with the addition of one crucial feature that I haven't been able to find just yet: the ability to generate a document in addition to allow human editing. For example, this is my desired workflow, Step 1, create a document automatically, Step 2, allow humans to begin editing with tracked changes, and Step 3, potentially update the automatically generated content while keeping the edits. That workflow is what I'm looking for? Any recommendations?
- kfk 8y ago
  That is actually an enterprise feature that gets very little recognition. There are many challenges with keeping it all in sync, especially if you have multiple contributors. But may I ask more specifics on your case? For me and my team is about getting forecats and kpis from humans into a central database from which we can then do further analysis and plotting, reports, etc
- iak8god 8y ago
  Your Step 3 is the hard part. For Steps 1 & 2 have you looked into generating markup and using Pandoc to convert to, e.g. Word files? https://pandoc.org/ https://pandoc.org/
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  You can generate documents and other access other google api functionality with apps script https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/docs https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/docs so you can not just create formulas, documents etc. but also emails, modify calendar events based on behaviors.
thenaturalist 8y ago
Direct link: https://developers.google.com/docs/api/ https://developers.google.com/docs/api/
Scarbutt 8y ago
Genuine question, What's the use case for this? If you already have to do some programming how is it different from generating html documents (like invoices) (that can be converted to PDF) and some web forms for filling out the templates?
- abraae 8y ago
  One use case is generating contracts. The end users can maintain and author the contract templates because they are in a familiar environment. Then use the API to plug data into the placeholders to create the finished doc.
asah 8y ago
FYI the Python quickstart.py is broken on Ubuntu 18.04 (tried both python2 and python3). I've notified the eng in the video, and sent her here. By definition, credentials.json doesn't exist yet and this throws an error. Transcript below. creds = None if os.path.exists('token.pickle'): ... # If there are no (valid) credentials available, let the user log in. if not creds or not creds.valid: if creds and creds.expired and creds.refresh_token: ... else: flow = InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file( 'credentials.json', SCOPES) creds = flow.run_local_server() https://developers.google.com/docs/api/quickstart/python https://developers.google.com/docs/api/quickstart/python $ sudo apt install python3-pip Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: grub-pc-bin libpython-all-dev libpython-dev libpython2.7 libpython2.7-dev python-all python-all-dev python-asn1crypto python-cffi-backend python-crcmod python-crypto python-cryptography python-dbus python-dev python-enum34 python-gi python-idna python-ipaddress python-keyring python-keyrings.alt python-secretstorage python-six python-wheel python-xdg python2.7-dev Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them. The following NEW packages will be installed: python3-pip 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 11 not upgraded. Need to get 114 kB of archives. After this operation, 599 kB of additional disk space will be used. Get:1 http://us-east4-c.gce.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu http://us-east4-c.gce.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/universe amd64 python3-pip all 9.0.1-2.3~ubuntu1 [114 kB] Fetched 114 kB in 1s (175 kB/s) Selecting previously unselected package python3-pip. (Reading database ... 128010 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../python3-pip_9.0.1-2.3~ubuntu1_all.deb ... Unpacking python3-pip (9.0.1-2.3~ubuntu1) ... Setting up python3-pip (9.0.1-2.3~ubuntu1) ... Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.3-2ubuntu0.1) ... $ pip3 install --upgrade google-api-python-client google-auth-httplib2 google-auth-oauthlib Collecting google-api-python-client Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/55/e9/e8fb2e3a031cb69b9524b80a92b126665d9a17421700a219555e3233ab6a/google_api_python_client-1.7.8-py3-none-any.whl https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/55/e9/e8fb2e3a031cb6... (56kB) 100% || 61kB 3.1MB/s Collecting google-auth-httplib2 Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/33/49/c814d6d438b823441552198f096fcd0377fd6c88714dbed34f1d3c8c4389/google_auth_httplib2-0.0.3-py2.py3-none-any.whl https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/33/49/c814d6d438b823... 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Building wheels for collected packages: httplib2 Running setup.py bdist_wheel for httplib2 ... done Stored in directory: /home/asah/.cache/pip/wheels/6d/41/4b/2b369d6e2b7eaebcdd423516d3fb659c7658c16a2be8fd04ec Successfully built httplib2 Installing collected packages: six, httplib2, cachetools, pyasn1, pyasn1-modules, rsa, google-auth, google-auth-httplib2, uritemplate, google-api-python-client, oauthlib, urllib3, certifi, chardet, idna, requests, requests-oauthlib, google-auth-oauthlib Successfully installed cachetools-3.1.0 certifi-2018.11.29 chardet-3.0.4 google-api-python-client-1.7.8 google-auth-1.6.2 google-auth-httplib2-0.0.3 google-auth-oauthlib-0.2.0 httplib2-0.12.0 idna-2.8 oauthlib-3.0.1 pyasn1-0.4.5 pyasn1-modules-0.2.4 requests-2.21.0 requests-oauthlib-1.2.0 rsa-4.0 six-1.12.0 uritemplate-3.0.0 urllib3-1.24.1 $ python quickstart.py InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file()... Traceback (most recent call last): File "quickstart.py", line 47, in <module> main() File "quickstart.py", line 32, in main 'credentials.json', SCOPES) File "/home/asah/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/google_auth_oauthlib/flow.py", line 171, in from_client_secrets_file with open(client_secrets_file, 'r') as json_file: IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'credentials.json' $ cat quickstart.py from __future__ import print_function import pickle import os.path from googleapiclient.discovery import build from google_auth_oauthlib.flow import InstalledAppFlow from google.auth.transport.requests import Request # If modifying these scopes, delete the file token.pickle. SCOPES = ['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/documents.readonly' https://www.googleapis.com/auth/documents.readonly'] # The ID of a sample document. DOCUMENT_ID = '195j9eDD3ccgjQRttHhJPymLJUCOUjs-jmwTrekvdjFE' def main(): """Shows basic usage of the Docs API. Prints the title of a sample document. """ creds = None # The file token.pickle stores the user's access and refresh tokens, and is # created automatically when the authorization flow completes for the first # time. if os.path.exists('token.pickle'): with open('token.pickle', 'rb') as token: creds = pickle.load(token) # If there are no (valid) credentials available, let the user log in. if not creds or not creds.valid: if creds and creds.expired and creds.refresh_token: creds.refresh(Request()) else: print("InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file()...") flow = InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file( 'credentials.json', SCOPES) creds = flow.run_local_server() # Save the credentials for the next run with open('token.pickle', 'wb') as token: pickle.dump(creds, token) service = build('docs', 'v1', credentials=creds) # Retrieve the documents contents from the Docs service. document = service.documents().get(documentId=DOCUMENT_ID).execute() print('The title of the document is: {}'.format(document.get('title'))) if __name__ == '__main__': main()
tptacek 8y ago
I was pretty psyched about this, but it looks like you can't control table styles with it? Styled tables are a pretty big part of how you end up controlling formatting in GDocs, so I don't think I can build this into our workflow without that.
- DoubleCribble 8y ago
  It definitely exists within the Apps Script functionality. [0] [0] https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/document/table#setAttributes(Object) https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/document...
Spectral 8y ago
Hmm in this demo the interface looks exactly like Zapier (automation service).. wonder what relationship they have: https://zapier.com https://zapier.com
- halflings 8y ago
  The demo is the Zapier interface. From the article: > Some of the companies that built solutions based on the new API during the preview period include Zapier, Netflix, Mailchimp and Final Draft.
  - philsnow 8y ago
    The demo shows manually typing static data into the fields, instead of pulling the data dynamically from the input event like you typically would. disclaimer, I work at Zapier
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
xd1936 8y ago
Oh cool. I've done a lot of similar projects in recent years with Apps Script [1]. With a script that's tied to a document (or even a standalone script that references Docs by ID), you can design your own API of sorts. Take in HTTP GET and PUT [2], run commands with DocumentApp [3], etc. The upside to a system like that is, the authorization flow is abstracted completely out and handled by Google. You just pick from a dropdown as far as who you want to have access to the Web App URL, and you don't have to deal at all with setting up an OAuth flow. 1. https://developers.google.com/apps-script/ https://developers.google.com/apps-script/ 2. https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/web https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/web 3. https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/docs https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/docs
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  right I was thinking I can do this with apps script but I guess this abstracts away some stuff, which is good.
grakic 8y ago
I wish for a similar API for Google Data Studio documents.
doctorRetro 8y ago
That's cool. Know what else would be cool and probably get more use? Fixing bugs, improving performance on large documents, and bringing the feature set more up to date.
- irrational 8y ago
  But, that's all boring work. Creating new features is a lot more fun!
cco 8y ago
They could have chosen any amount for a salary in the example and they chose $25,000?
- jessaustin 8y ago
  There's no reason to make people feel bad.
  - cco 8y ago
    That is a salary below the minimum wage in many major American cities and only 200% of the federal poverty line. I'm not suggesting six figures, but maybe 40,000? It just seems odd to me to use a figure that low in a example.
londons_explore 8y ago
It seems all of this was possible before the new API. Google Docs already had an HTML import/export API, which allowed you to download a document, make changes, and save those changes back again. That would allow you to implement any kind of templating you like. This API just makes it slightly easier and more visible.
- gboudrias 8y ago
  > This API just makes it slightly easier and more visible. Yeah that's what APIs do. You can usually work with CURL requests/scraping too, but it always feels clunky and improvised, much like the method you are describing seems to me. Making something easier means making it more accessible, means the tech based around these tools will advance faster, and that's good for everyone. It's not just a new bauble, well, except it's Google, but it will be very useful until they inevitably abandon it.
- IanCal 8y ago
  I've used the HTML conversion a lot. It's absolutely infuriating. Tiny differences in html being sent seem to result in headers working or not, tables rendering differently and more. > Google Docs already had an HTML import/export API, which allowed you to download a document, make changes, and save those changes back again. I found that importing an export didn't result in the same looking document.
julianz 8y ago
Great. Can we automate changing every single goddamn spreadsheet to not be in US date format? And while we're in there, how about adding a locale for New Zealand?
- theDoug 8y ago
  I suspect you have tried this, but if not, - visit https://myaccount.google.com/language https://myaccount.google.com/language - click on (re-choose) English - click on New Zealand as the 'sub-language' should set your locale across the board, rather than doing it on a per-sheet basis. If it doesn't work, as a Canadian, I empathize with your troubles and apologize.
  - theDoug 8y ago
    I've also found visiting https://calendar.google.com/calendar/b/1/r/settings https://calendar.google.com/calendar/b/1/r/settings and setting date format there useful. Not sure if it's a universal setting like the previous, though.
  - julianz 8y ago
    Wow, that seems to have got closer, thank you. Spreadsheets are now created with Australian locale, although they have now lost their default timezone completely. I'm interested whether this change will affect other Google products, in particular whether it messes up the operation of Google Assistant on my phone (possibly that can be overridden). Cheers!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- sixothree 8y ago
  ISO 8601 needs to be default everywhere.
- notafrog 8y ago
  Similarly, a few weather apps incorrectly show the temperature in Fahrenheit for European users. It's very annoying.
fattypouch 8y ago
i made a google drive shell that could create documents and update the doc's content with PyDrive. Whats the difference? https://github.com/chrissparksnj/google_drive_shell https://github.com/chrissparksnj/google_drive_shell
seanwilson 8y ago
Which parts are completely new that you couldn't do before? Haven't they had APIs for years that let you pull data out of documents and edit them as well? Or Google Docs specifically was lacking here?
- statictype 8y ago
  I believe its specifically Google Docs. Google Sheets has had a reasonably good API for years.
zapov 8y ago
I’m glad to see that binding data with document templates is slowly becoming used more often. I always saw it as a killer feature, and actually built one of my products around that idea way in 2011 [1]. Once you leave the simple use cases of just replacing tags it gets quite complicated, but you can build really complex documents that way [2]. [1] http://templater.info [2] https://github.com/ngs-doo/templaterexamples
adzicg 8y ago
thanks, but no thanks. I spent a month building integration with google hangouts, only to see it being deprecated before we could even launch. wasted months fighting with undocumented drive realtime API issues to make it work seamlessly and it was pulled last year without replacement. drive v3 api still does not have ETAG conditional uploads that drive v2 had. never biting that google bait and switch thing with apis again.
- frogperson 8y ago
  This is the reason I will not recommend Google Cloud to any of my clients. I just can't rely on them
  - ghayes 8y ago
    Google Cloud has a very different SLA and deprecation policy than the APIs for Google user-facing services. I have not seen a single feature deprecated or removed without replacement in Google Cloud during my usage over the last two years.
- mirceal 8y ago
  this ^ i am having a hard time seeing myself using anything that google puts out. i have been burned way to many times. the biggest ones? google reader, code and inbox (happening now). sorry but it’s really hard to bet the farm on otherwise cool technology
afandian 8y ago
It terrifies me how entrenched the Google suite is becoming, and more 'open' APIs will surely further that position. It's the default for most community / cross org collaboration and note-taking in my line of work. A huge amount of stuff gets done in Google docs. And then Google ban your account for some random reason and you're suddenly barred from participating, your voice can no longer be heard, and who knows what happens to your existing contributions. I've not seen it happen first hand, but there are enough stories of people getting frozen out. One alternative, which the Wikimedia community use, is Etherpad. It's ok for text editing but less polished. People talk on HN about moral decisions about Google / Facebooke employees. Should that level of scrutiny apply to 3rd party plugin authors who help consolidate market share?
- koheripbal 8y ago
  As the CTO for a company that uses GSUITE fairly heavily, the main reason I refrain from adopting Google tech isn't so much the risk of being banned, it is the likelihood that Google will simply abandon core integration points, and will force us to re-build whatever we've implemented in Google.
  - afandian 8y ago
    That too. But there's a difference between slow deprecation and being instantaneously cut off. Every time there's a sob story that "Google killed my business by banning my Android app" there's a strong "your fault for relying on Google". But it seems like a blind spot when it comes to e.g. email and collaboration tools. Like Google's too big to fail. While failure at a grand scale is probably unlikely at this point, I can totally see localised failure, such as a missed credit card payment or suspicious activity on an associated account causing absolute mayhem for an organisation.
- skybrian 8y ago
  A business running GSuite getting banned would indeed be a disaster, but has this ever happened? For personal accounts, what happens if you create another account? It's also a big disruption, but "your voice can no longer be heard" seems exaggerated?
ClassyJacket 8y ago
A logical feature, which I may even use. However - Business-oriented releases like this need to come with a guarantee of existence for X years (some reasonable number) if Google expects anyone to use this for business purposes -- especially any paid/G-suite version (or whatever their premium version is called this week). Even then, it'd be a tough sell, as simply not shutting off the servers doesn't mean they'll actually actively update and support it. Google, an advertising company, is competing against Microsoft, a software company with its roots in this exact type of software and thousand of companies with piles of MS-specific macros and scripts and processes they've been working with since the 90s. Half-assing it is not going to work, even if they have a free tier available. I use Google Drive regularly for personal documents, and even for my one-person business, but I wouldn't dream of entrenching myself in it in such a way that operations could be disrupted if they decide to switch the servers off next week with two days warning. Search isn't going away. Maps isn't going away. But everything else Google is subject to a shut off at any second. Gmail isn't going away either, but your specific account could, with no recourse or appeal or access to your data. The question we should all be asking at the release of ANY new Google feature shouldn't be "does Google have the engineering talent to make this good?". Of course they do. If Google wanted to start making space rockets tomorrow they could. The right question is "does Google have incentive in the form of advertising revenue to keep working on this?" I predict this is another feature that has already been abandoned as of this writing, with no further updates to come.
- ernsheong 8y ago
  Such a cynical comment. G Suite is a premium product for business and enterprise. It isn't going anywhere.
fernly 8y ago
Excellent, a brand new attack surface for malware. Cue the report of a Docs worm in: three, two...
kumarski 8y ago
I've been using mintdata.com and afterclass.co as the alternative. Googledocs gets annoying.
kumarski 8y ago
I use mintdata.com and afterclass.co
EGreg 8y ago
Now if only I could automate my mail merge and build a CRM from a spreadsheet, scan business cards into it and hit a button.
oyebenny 8y ago
Hail Corporate.....
arsalanb 8y ago
This is interesting and kind of weird at the same time. I think Google has missed the point completely with this. While it is true that the future of documents is API driven and task automation will meet document editors, this is simply not the way forward. It's like Henry Ford giving people who are looking for faster and more economical transportation an assembly line instead of a car. Here is why: - Task automation, by definition is supposed to save time and money. By building a developer API, you still need developers (whose time costs more money!) to build and maintain your automations. - The underlying document model itself cannot be accessed. So what they've made is some kind of HandleBarJS way of creating documents and filling them in. I'm working on something in a similar space (https://afterclass.co https://afterclass.co) and we've had to build our own document model and automation handler to work around these two problems. Would be interesting to see how this pans out :)
jethro_tell 8y ago
now they can automate shutting it down in 4 years after they do a half ass job of adding features.
jpkeisala 8y ago
They talk about Content Management, why not do some development on Google Sites finally. It seems like it's been idle for 10 years. I would like to see some love for Google Sites so small businesses could use it make a proper looking website where content management would be over Google Docs.
JulianMorrison 8y ago
This is me not trusting yet another open api that will close the minute it gets inconvenient.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
fjabre 8y ago
Google is ridiculous with its API restrictions and lackluster offerings. For a software company it astounds me how poor and mismanaged their API options are. Unreliable in the sense they pull the plug a lot with these pet projects leaving devs hanging. Can they be trusted?
el3ctron 8y ago
so cool except when you think about your info is handled by a company who collaborates with NSA. Good bye google.

594 points by Manu1987 8y ago

Oh wow, this is pretty cool. I was actually planning to build a Google Docs plugin for my PDF templating product [1], and the UI was going to be very similar. They seem have a pretty simple API with limited types and field validation, so maybe there's still room for a more powerful competitor (that also has support for e-signatures.) But it's really interesting to see how competitors evolve over time. Now HelloSign has been acquired by Dropbox, and Google Docs has launched their own document generation API. [1] https://formapi.io https://formapi.io

leesalminen 8y ago

One cool thing I did with the Google Drive API was pull in our app's release notes from Google Drive. This allows our product and support teams to write/edit release notes and have it "magically" appear in-app as HTML. The workflow is: 1.) Employee creates a GDoc in a known, shared folder 2.) Application pulls all GDocs from this shared folder 3.) Application uses GDrive API to convert the GDoc to HTML 4.) HTML is displayed to the end user. This proved to be an easy solution to having to involve a developer to fix a typo in a release note.

nolite 8y ago
I did something similar and hacky by just rendering the google drive links in an iframe in our app
seanwilson 8y ago
Do you have to worry about abuse of the API key used to pull in the doc or this isn't an issue (e.g. API call cost or going over a quota)?
- leesalminen 8y ago
  We do 2 things: 1- the API keys are only used on our servers and not the device, so no new worries about the key getting out and abused 2- we cache the results of the API calls for 5-10 minutes with Redis. So there's no worries about the quota or rate limits. We've been doing this for about a year with 15,000 daily active users. When we publish a new release note roughly half read it within the first 24 hours. No issues to report.

intrasight 8y ago

I do a lot of Office automation. It's nice to know that similar can now be done with Google Docs.

dvtrn 8y ago
I found there to be a lot of demand in document automation especially in the real estate world. What's your experience been like, just wondering?
- intrasight 8y ago
  I've done it on and off for about 15 years. I've done some in the real estate world as well. My experience in a nutshell: * You have to use server-side automation - which is unsupported, and probably even violates Microsoft's terms of use. * It's tricky. I use a serialized message queue to generate documents. * Microsoft was dang stupid to not support automation. Such lost opportunity. I doubt that Google's supporting automation is going to change Microsoft.

tylfin 8y ago

Do Google Doc features really impact the community enough warrant a post? Just seems like marketing to me.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
Useful until it’s deprecated. If you need permanence/long term support, use Office and Microsoft’s tooling (instead of Google products).
- DoubleCribble 8y ago
  The features of Docs and Word are more of a Venn diagram than a circle. One does not easily substitute for the other.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    I don’t think I need to expound on why one shouldn’t rely on Google Docs-specific features for business processes. Will the feature you need last longer than Wave? Or Inbox? Will you get a shutdown notice as bad as that for the Google+ API?
    - DoubleCribble 8y ago
      Maybe? But what's the average life expectancy of a particular workflow? As long as the feature outlives my workflow, I'm a happy camper.
      - toomuchtodo 8y ago
        I can’t speak to workflow longevity. My assumption, based on enterprise work experience, is that corporations using Office 365 and MS Flow are going to prefer that workflow over Google Docs (and they’re probably already federated to Azure AD, making access control easy peasy). People want to derisk what they deliver, and want to keep their jobs. Microsoft delivers on that, Google does not. This isn’t about emotion, it’s about pragmatism.

efangs 8y ago

This will be nice until they take it away...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
riku_iki 8y ago
Or change API and you need to rewrite all your code..
- chillacy 8y ago
  Google is pretty good about API versioning I've found. Likely they will release a V2 and deprecate V1 at some point.
judge2020 8y ago
Since this is GSuite-focused, It likely won't be removed without a long period of prior notice.
nikolay 8y ago
Yeah, they gave us enough reasons not to integrate them into our daily lives. Keep off!
matz1 8y ago
Nothing last forever, especially in tech, you should always have backup plan.
shaki-dora 8y ago
If only this tired meme would die as fast as a Google product...

abraae 8y ago

We spent a lot of time and money building a document generation add-on to our platform. It seems that money might have been better used elsewhere!

gcatalfamo 8y ago
Did you look into it already? I have yet to understand what new stuff is there and what old stuff has just been repackaged into "office automation"
- abraae 8y ago
  Our use case is replacing placeholders inside documents with generated values, removing or adding entire sections, and exporting to pdf. Looks like that is all possible.

hawkjo 8y ago

Does this mean managed bibliographies will finally become a reality in google docs? That’s the only thing keeping me from using it much.

legitster 8y ago

They will have a lot of catchup to do to get where Office is now. I'm frankly amazed by how good Microsoft Flow has been. So many dumb business processes rely on an Excel doc somewhere, or a stupid manual email somewhere else. But with Flow I've seen just a single smarty-pants able to fully streamline an entire department one rule at a time. They don't need to get permission to bring in a new logo - it's part of Office, they can just do it. And no one has to get dragged into it kicking and screaming - you want to work off of an Excel file? Fine! It's still there! It feels like a hit of Agile steroids for an older organization.

kfk 8y ago
Is it still very desktop centric as all MS Office products? Because if it is you will struggle to keep up with the amount of data, report and automation that need to run on top of various cloud applications.
- legitster 8y ago
  Office is getting to (but not quite at) that sweet spot of "it just works". So long as you save into your Onedrive a lot of that is magically taken care of. And then you get that one user who takes the collaborative document, downloads it to their desktop, then emails everyone a revision.
  - johnwalkr 8y ago
    > And then you get that one user who takes the collaborative document, downloads it to their desktop, then emails everyone a revision. This is a constant struggle for me. It took about 3 years, but I had most of our company using google docs and not working locally much. Then a critical mass of newcomers came and the IT department decided we should move away from google docs and so provided a file server. A year later, a few people of us are stubbornly using google docs but 80% of our files are scattered across the fileserver and desktops. And you can be sure that whatever you find on the fileserver is not the latest version. While I’m on a rant, the same people refuse to use commenting features and instead add red text and text boxes all over the place.

jacquesm 8y ago

I wished they would spend time on fixing bugs, Google docs has so many subtle bugs it is a very annoying product to use. Of course you could argue that you could do both new features and fix bugs but with budgets (even for Google) finite and new features not as critical as fixing existing issues I would love for the priority to be given to bug fixes. Pet peeve: it is impossible to do a wysiwyg document in Google docs, it will come out subtly different on almost every computer/browser combo and in the end will come out different again when exported as a PDF resulting in endless cycles of revisions.

jiveturkey 8y ago
the entire productivity suite is very much an MVP product. the killer feature is real-time collaborative work, for that aspect it's actually quite good IMHO. then for sheets, being able to work in "apps script" is fantastic. apparently you can use typescript in excel with some third party tools but surely they all stink in some way, and won't product portable documents. and anyway, VB is ok enough and has its own strengths. otherwise, Office completely blows away google apps.
- Scarbutt 8y ago
  Excel is adding JS support: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/excel/custom-functions-overview https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/excel/cu...
  - ec109685 8y ago
    That seems better than google’s version given it seems like the function will act like just another built in.
andyroid 8y ago
Definitely agree on how annoying that is, but as far as I know no one has really pulled off client side rendering in any way looking even close to equal on all browsers and platforms. I know I spent years on another project trying to do just that before resigning to render the final result (PDF in this case) server side - so at least _that_ was consistent, albeit unfortunately not with the expectations one has from having seen the client side rendering before.

ryeguy_24 8y ago

I've been looking for a sophisticated way to automatically generate documents for a while (formulas, data tables) with the addition of one crucial feature that I haven't been able to find just yet: the ability to generate a document in addition to allow human editing. For example, this is my desired workflow, Step 1, create a document automatically, Step 2, allow humans to begin editing with tracked changes, and Step 3, potentially update the automatically generated content while keeping the edits. That workflow is what I'm looking for? Any recommendations?

kfk 8y ago
That is actually an enterprise feature that gets very little recognition. There are many challenges with keeping it all in sync, especially if you have multiple contributors. But may I ask more specifics on your case? For me and my team is about getting forecats and kpis from humans into a central database from which we can then do further analysis and plotting, reports, etc
iak8god 8y ago
Your Step 3 is the hard part. For Steps 1 & 2 have you looked into generating markup and using Pandoc to convert to, e.g. Word files? https://pandoc.org/ https://pandoc.org/
bryanrasmussen 8y ago
You can generate documents and other access other google api functionality with apps script https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/docs https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/docs so you can not just create formulas, documents etc. but also emails, modify calendar events based on behaviors.

thenaturalist 8y ago

Direct link: https://developers.google.com/docs/api/ https://developers.google.com/docs/api/

Scarbutt 8y ago

Genuine question, What's the use case for this? If you already have to do some programming how is it different from generating html documents (like invoices) (that can be converted to PDF) and some web forms for filling out the templates?

abraae 8y ago
One use case is generating contracts. The end users can maintain and author the contract templates because they are in a familiar environment. Then use the API to plug data into the placeholders to create the finished doc.

asah 8y ago

FYI the Python quickstart.py is broken on Ubuntu 18.04 (tried both python2 and python3). I've notified the eng in the video, and sent her here. By definition, credentials.json doesn't exist yet and this throws an error. Transcript below. creds = None if os.path.exists('token.pickle'): ... # If there are no (valid) credentials available, let the user log in. if not creds or not creds.valid: if creds and creds.expired and creds.refresh_token: ... else: flow = InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file( 'credentials.json', SCOPES) creds = flow.run_local_server() https://developers.google.com/docs/api/quickstart/python https://developers.google.com/docs/api/quickstart/python $ sudo apt install python3-pip Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: grub-pc-bin libpython-all-dev libpython-dev libpython2.7 libpython2.7-dev python-all python-all-dev python-asn1crypto python-cffi-backend python-crcmod python-crypto python-cryptography python-dbus python-dev python-enum34 python-gi python-idna python-ipaddress python-keyring python-keyrings.alt python-secretstorage python-six python-wheel python-xdg python2.7-dev Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them. The following NEW packages will be installed: python3-pip 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 11 not upgraded. Need to get 114 kB of archives. After this operation, 599 kB of additional disk space will be used. Get:1 http://us-east4-c.gce.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu http://us-east4-c.gce.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/universe amd64 python3-pip all 9.0.1-2.3~ubuntu1 [114 kB] Fetched 114 kB in 1s (175 kB/s) Selecting previously unselected package python3-pip. (Reading database ... 128010 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../python3-pip_9.0.1-2.3~ubuntu1_all.deb ... Unpacking python3-pip (9.0.1-2.3~ubuntu1) ... Setting up python3-pip (9.0.1-2.3~ubuntu1) ... Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.3-2ubuntu0.1) ... $ pip3 install --upgrade google-api-python-client google-auth-httplib2 google-auth-oauthlib Collecting google-api-python-client Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/55/e9/e8fb2e3a031cb69b9524b80a92b126665d9a17421700a219555e3233ab6a/google_api_python_client-1.7.8-py3-none-any.whl https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/55/e9/e8fb2e3a031cb6... (56kB) 100% || 61kB 3.1MB/s Collecting google-auth-httplib2 Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/33/49/c814d6d438b823441552198f096fcd0377fd6c88714dbed34f1d3c8c4389/google_auth_httplib2-0.0.3-py2.py3-none-any.whl https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/33/49/c814d6d438b823... 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Building wheels for collected packages: httplib2 Running setup.py bdist_wheel for httplib2 ... done Stored in directory: /home/asah/.cache/pip/wheels/6d/41/4b/2b369d6e2b7eaebcdd423516d3fb659c7658c16a2be8fd04ec Successfully built httplib2 Installing collected packages: six, httplib2, cachetools, pyasn1, pyasn1-modules, rsa, google-auth, google-auth-httplib2, uritemplate, google-api-python-client, oauthlib, urllib3, certifi, chardet, idna, requests, requests-oauthlib, google-auth-oauthlib Successfully installed cachetools-3.1.0 certifi-2018.11.29 chardet-3.0.4 google-api-python-client-1.7.8 google-auth-1.6.2 google-auth-httplib2-0.0.3 google-auth-oauthlib-0.2.0 httplib2-0.12.0 idna-2.8 oauthlib-3.0.1 pyasn1-0.4.5 pyasn1-modules-0.2.4 requests-2.21.0 requests-oauthlib-1.2.0 rsa-4.0 six-1.12.0 uritemplate-3.0.0 urllib3-1.24.1 $ python quickstart.py InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file()... Traceback (most recent call last): File "quickstart.py", line 47, in <module> main() File "quickstart.py", line 32, in main 'credentials.json', SCOPES) File "/home/asah/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/google_auth_oauthlib/flow.py", line 171, in from_client_secrets_file with open(client_secrets_file, 'r') as json_file: IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'credentials.json' $ cat quickstart.py from __future__ import print_function import pickle import os.path from googleapiclient.discovery import build from google_auth_oauthlib.flow import InstalledAppFlow from google.auth.transport.requests import Request # If modifying these scopes, delete the file token.pickle. SCOPES = ['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/documents.readonly' https://www.googleapis.com/auth/documents.readonly'] # The ID of a sample document. DOCUMENT_ID = '195j9eDD3ccgjQRttHhJPymLJUCOUjs-jmwTrekvdjFE' def main(): """Shows basic usage of the Docs API. Prints the title of a sample document. """ creds = None # The file token.pickle stores the user's access and refresh tokens, and is # created automatically when the authorization flow completes for the first # time. if os.path.exists('token.pickle'): with open('token.pickle', 'rb') as token: creds = pickle.load(token) # If there are no (valid) credentials available, let the user log in. if not creds or not creds.valid: if creds and creds.expired and creds.refresh_token: creds.refresh(Request()) else: print("InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file()...") flow = InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file( 'credentials.json', SCOPES) creds = flow.run_local_server() # Save the credentials for the next run with open('token.pickle', 'wb') as token: pickle.dump(creds, token) service = build('docs', 'v1', credentials=creds) # Retrieve the documents contents from the Docs service. document = service.documents().get(documentId=DOCUMENT_ID).execute() print('The title of the document is: {}'.format(document.get('title'))) if __name__ == '__main__': main()

tptacek 8y ago

I was pretty psyched about this, but it looks like you can't control table styles with it? Styled tables are a pretty big part of how you end up controlling formatting in GDocs, so I don't think I can build this into our workflow without that.

DoubleCribble 8y ago
It definitely exists within the Apps Script functionality. [0] [0] https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/document/table#setAttributes(Object) https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/document...

Spectral 8y ago

Hmm in this demo the interface looks exactly like Zapier (automation service).. wonder what relationship they have: https://zapier.com https://zapier.com

halflings 8y ago
The demo is the Zapier interface. From the article: > Some of the companies that built solutions based on the new API during the preview period include Zapier, Netflix, Mailchimp and Final Draft.
- philsnow 8y ago
  The demo shows manually typing static data into the fields, instead of pulling the data dynamically from the input event like you typically would. disclaimer, I work at Zapier
deleted 8y ago
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xd1936 8y ago

Oh cool. I've done a lot of similar projects in recent years with Apps Script [1]. With a script that's tied to a document (or even a standalone script that references Docs by ID), you can design your own API of sorts. Take in HTTP GET and PUT [2], run commands with DocumentApp [3], etc. The upside to a system like that is, the authorization flow is abstracted completely out and handled by Google. You just pick from a dropdown as far as who you want to have access to the Web App URL, and you don't have to deal at all with setting up an OAuth flow. 1. https://developers.google.com/apps-script/ https://developers.google.com/apps-script/ 2. https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/web https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/web 3. https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/docs https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/docs

bryanrasmussen 8y ago
right I was thinking I can do this with apps script but I guess this abstracts away some stuff, which is good.

grakic 8y ago

I wish for a similar API for Google Data Studio documents.

doctorRetro 8y ago

That's cool. Know what else would be cool and probably get more use? Fixing bugs, improving performance on large documents, and bringing the feature set more up to date.

irrational 8y ago
But, that's all boring work. Creating new features is a lot more fun!

cco 8y ago

They could have chosen any amount for a salary in the example and they chose $25,000?

jessaustin 8y ago
There's no reason to make people feel bad.
- cco 8y ago
  That is a salary below the minimum wage in many major American cities and only 200% of the federal poverty line. I'm not suggesting six figures, but maybe 40,000? It just seems odd to me to use a figure that low in a example.

londons_explore 8y ago

It seems all of this was possible before the new API. Google Docs already had an HTML import/export API, which allowed you to download a document, make changes, and save those changes back again. That would allow you to implement any kind of templating you like. This API just makes it slightly easier and more visible.

gboudrias 8y ago
> This API just makes it slightly easier and more visible. Yeah that's what APIs do. You can usually work with CURL requests/scraping too, but it always feels clunky and improvised, much like the method you are describing seems to me. Making something easier means making it more accessible, means the tech based around these tools will advance faster, and that's good for everyone. It's not just a new bauble, well, except it's Google, but it will be very useful until they inevitably abandon it.
IanCal 8y ago
I've used the HTML conversion a lot. It's absolutely infuriating. Tiny differences in html being sent seem to result in headers working or not, tables rendering differently and more. > Google Docs already had an HTML import/export API, which allowed you to download a document, make changes, and save those changes back again. I found that importing an export didn't result in the same looking document.

julianz 8y ago

Great. Can we automate changing every single goddamn spreadsheet to not be in US date format? And while we're in there, how about adding a locale for New Zealand?

theDoug 8y ago
I suspect you have tried this, but if not, - visit https://myaccount.google.com/language https://myaccount.google.com/language - click on (re-choose) English - click on New Zealand as the 'sub-language' should set your locale across the board, rather than doing it on a per-sheet basis. If it doesn't work, as a Canadian, I empathize with your troubles and apologize.
- theDoug 8y ago
  I've also found visiting https://calendar.google.com/calendar/b/1/r/settings https://calendar.google.com/calendar/b/1/r/settings and setting date format there useful. Not sure if it's a universal setting like the previous, though.
- julianz 8y ago
  Wow, that seems to have got closer, thank you. Spreadsheets are now created with Australian locale, although they have now lost their default timezone completely. I'm interested whether this change will affect other Google products, in particular whether it messes up the operation of Google Assistant on my phone (possibly that can be overridden). Cheers!
deleted 8y ago
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sixothree 8y ago
ISO 8601 needs to be default everywhere.
notafrog 8y ago
Similarly, a few weather apps incorrectly show the temperature in Fahrenheit for European users. It's very annoying.

fattypouch 8y ago

i made a google drive shell that could create documents and update the doc's content with PyDrive. Whats the difference? https://github.com/chrissparksnj/google_drive_shell https://github.com/chrissparksnj/google_drive_shell

seanwilson 8y ago

Which parts are completely new that you couldn't do before? Haven't they had APIs for years that let you pull data out of documents and edit them as well? Or Google Docs specifically was lacking here?

statictype 8y ago
I believe its specifically Google Docs. Google Sheets has had a reasonably good API for years.

zapov 8y ago

I’m glad to see that binding data with document templates is slowly becoming used more often. I always saw it as a killer feature, and actually built one of my products around that idea way in 2011 [1]. Once you leave the simple use cases of just replacing tags it gets quite complicated, but you can build really complex documents that way [2]. [1] http://templater.info [2] https://github.com/ngs-doo/templaterexamples

adzicg 8y ago

thanks, but no thanks. I spent a month building integration with google hangouts, only to see it being deprecated before we could even launch. wasted months fighting with undocumented drive realtime API issues to make it work seamlessly and it was pulled last year without replacement. drive v3 api still does not have ETAG conditional uploads that drive v2 had. never biting that google bait and switch thing with apis again.

frogperson 8y ago
This is the reason I will not recommend Google Cloud to any of my clients. I just can't rely on them
- ghayes 8y ago
  Google Cloud has a very different SLA and deprecation policy than the APIs for Google user-facing services. I have not seen a single feature deprecated or removed without replacement in Google Cloud during my usage over the last two years.
mirceal 8y ago
this ^ i am having a hard time seeing myself using anything that google puts out. i have been burned way to many times. the biggest ones? google reader, code and inbox (happening now). sorry but it’s really hard to bet the farm on otherwise cool technology

afandian 8y ago

It terrifies me how entrenched the Google suite is becoming, and more 'open' APIs will surely further that position. It's the default for most community / cross org collaboration and note-taking in my line of work. A huge amount of stuff gets done in Google docs. And then Google ban your account for some random reason and you're suddenly barred from participating, your voice can no longer be heard, and who knows what happens to your existing contributions. I've not seen it happen first hand, but there are enough stories of people getting frozen out. One alternative, which the Wikimedia community use, is Etherpad. It's ok for text editing but less polished. People talk on HN about moral decisions about Google / Facebooke employees. Should that level of scrutiny apply to 3rd party plugin authors who help consolidate market share?

koheripbal 8y ago
As the CTO for a company that uses GSUITE fairly heavily, the main reason I refrain from adopting Google tech isn't so much the risk of being banned, it is the likelihood that Google will simply abandon core integration points, and will force us to re-build whatever we've implemented in Google.
- afandian 8y ago
  That too. But there's a difference between slow deprecation and being instantaneously cut off. Every time there's a sob story that "Google killed my business by banning my Android app" there's a strong "your fault for relying on Google". But it seems like a blind spot when it comes to e.g. email and collaboration tools. Like Google's too big to fail. While failure at a grand scale is probably unlikely at this point, I can totally see localised failure, such as a missed credit card payment or suspicious activity on an associated account causing absolute mayhem for an organisation.
skybrian 8y ago
A business running GSuite getting banned would indeed be a disaster, but has this ever happened? For personal accounts, what happens if you create another account? It's also a big disruption, but "your voice can no longer be heard" seems exaggerated?

ClassyJacket 8y ago

A logical feature, which I may even use. However - Business-oriented releases like this need to come with a guarantee of existence for X years (some reasonable number) if Google expects anyone to use this for business purposes -- especially any paid/G-suite version (or whatever their premium version is called this week). Even then, it'd be a tough sell, as simply not shutting off the servers doesn't mean they'll actually actively update and support it. Google, an advertising company, is competing against Microsoft, a software company with its roots in this exact type of software and thousand of companies with piles of MS-specific macros and scripts and processes they've been working with since the 90s. Half-assing it is not going to work, even if they have a free tier available. I use Google Drive regularly for personal documents, and even for my one-person business, but I wouldn't dream of entrenching myself in it in such a way that operations could be disrupted if they decide to switch the servers off next week with two days warning. Search isn't going away. Maps isn't going away. But everything else Google is subject to a shut off at any second. Gmail isn't going away either, but your specific account could, with no recourse or appeal or access to your data. The question we should all be asking at the release of ANY new Google feature shouldn't be "does Google have the engineering talent to make this good?". Of course they do. If Google wanted to start making space rockets tomorrow they could. The right question is "does Google have incentive in the form of advertising revenue to keep working on this?" I predict this is another feature that has already been abandoned as of this writing, with no further updates to come.

ernsheong 8y ago
Such a cynical comment. G Suite is a premium product for business and enterprise. It isn't going anywhere.

fernly 8y ago

Excellent, a brand new attack surface for malware. Cue the report of a Docs worm in: three, two...

kumarski 8y ago

I've been using mintdata.com and afterclass.co as the alternative. Googledocs gets annoying.

kumarski 8y ago

I use mintdata.com and afterclass.co

EGreg 8y ago

Now if only I could automate my mail merge and build a CRM from a spreadsheet, scan business cards into it and hit a button.

oyebenny 8y ago

Hail Corporate.....

arsalanb 8y ago

This is interesting and kind of weird at the same time. I think Google has missed the point completely with this. While it is true that the future of documents is API driven and task automation will meet document editors, this is simply not the way forward. It's like Henry Ford giving people who are looking for faster and more economical transportation an assembly line instead of a car. Here is why: - Task automation, by definition is supposed to save time and money. By building a developer API, you still need developers (whose time costs more money!) to build and maintain your automations. - The underlying document model itself cannot be accessed. So what they've made is some kind of HandleBarJS way of creating documents and filling them in. I'm working on something in a similar space (https://afterclass.co https://afterclass.co) and we've had to build our own document model and automation handler to work around these two problems. Would be interesting to see how this pans out :)

jethro_tell 8y ago

now they can automate shutting it down in 4 years after they do a half ass job of adding features.

jpkeisala 8y ago

They talk about Content Management, why not do some development on Google Sites finally. It seems like it's been idle for 10 years. I would like to see some love for Google Sites so small businesses could use it make a proper looking website where content management would be over Google Docs.

JulianMorrison 8y ago

This is me not trusting yet another open api that will close the minute it gets inconvenient.

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fjabre 8y ago

Google is ridiculous with its API restrictions and lackluster offerings. For a software company it astounds me how poor and mismanaged their API options are. Unreliable in the sense they pull the plug a lot with these pet projects leaving devs hanging. Can they be trusted?

el3ctron 8y ago

so cool except when you think about your info is handled by a company who collaborates with NSA. Good bye google.