General Posts

Leveraging Google Workspace

by Rudy Hill

Over the past several years, I have had the opportunity to develop technology solutions from the ground up. This has allowed me to improve productivity for myself and for my teams. Along this journey I have been approached by many asking, “How did you learn to do all of that?” However, I would say that the underlying question is “How can I do that?”

My go-to answer is always to talk through projects I have worked on and describe the learning curve I went through to get the technical skills needed to develop a particular solution. The problem is that as soon as I describe things like web servers, databases, Linux, programming etc., I quickly lose the person’s attention. And, to be quick frank, I don’t blame one for tuning out. This is especially true when I begin to talk about the goal of expanding the technical knowledge of a team. The fact of the matter is that in order to build a commercial/enterprise level solution, a person really needs to have a serious set of skills...until now.

Now, I have to preface the remainder of this blog post by stating that I am in no way promoting Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) as a substitute for serious development at commercial/enterprise level. However, I think for organizations that have decided to adopt G Workspace, it is important to highlight that this suite of tools is more than just an email tool or a way to create and save documents in the cloud. G Workspace offers a unique opportunity to develop simple, cloud-based solutions that require little to no assistance from an organization’s IT group or outside consultant. 

One of the great opportunities offered by G Workspace is the ability for a non-technical team to acquire and develop the skills to build an actual cloud solution that uses a CRUD paradigm (Create, Read, Update, Delete). For example, imagine your team building a helpdesk logging form that has a simple approval process. Now, some will quickly point to the fact that G Workspace already offers the ability to quickly build a form and capture inputs in a Google spreadsheet. My response though would be that this current offering doesn’t allow a regular user to customize the form beyond a set list of features. The logging form I’m referring to is one that is customized, uses a Bootstrap framework, pulls data from several Google sheets, and provides a simple workflow process. And the great part of this project would be that you don’t need to spin up a web server or install a database.  All you need is a little patience.

One of the upsides of G Workspace is that it offers users the ability to customize the available tools via Google Apps Script.  I realize that this would be a new coding language for some, akin to VBA for Microsoft tools, but the upside is that the end-product would be cloud-based. The other upside is that you can build a solution quicker than hiring an outside consultant, once you invest a little time. More importantly, though, building a solution through G Workspace would provide a deeper insight into how many applications work.

So, here is your homework, if you are willing to go on this journey of learning to build quick cloud-based solutions: build a prototype of a form that uses the CRUD framework. To get you started, go to the link below and work through the first of a five part series that shows a person how to build a basic web app through G Workspace. Each part is about 30 minutes, so you will realistically need about 3-5 hours to build the example in this series. However, if you can successfully complete this series, you will have the foundation to build tools that bring more productivity to your organization, as well as save time and money on development costs. (Note: If you do decide to go through this web app series and get stuck, feel free to send me an e-mail.)

Web App Course - 1st part

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