Collaborative Tools Project

This is an approach we've used and re-used a number of times. Imagine you want a group of people to share some information using a Google Form. But although you don't really want to share the spreadsheet of the collected data, you do want people to use a subset of it. In this example, we will create a "Research Logger". Here's the first form, go fill it in . The Confirmation Page of the Form has a link to a web application made earlier, like this. The web application uses a Table Chart visualisation to show a subset of the data but has really nice filters so that you can drill down on the information. It looks like this. The web application above is browsable here . The code to display a table like this is... function doGet(e) { var spreadsheet_id = 'YOUR_SPREADSHEET_ID' var ss = SpreadsheetApp.openById(spreadsheet_id) var sheet = ss.getSheetByName("Form Responses") var last_row = sheet.getLastRow() ...

Google Forms are a great way to quickly collect data into a spreadsheet but what if the data you are collecting is a bit too complex for a simple form to handle? We've been experimenting with using a Google Spreadsheet, instead of a Form to gather information and finding that this approach has many advantages. We still use a Form to "initiate" the process, and the data gathered from the form is saved in a "central" spreadsheet. When the form is submitted, the central spreadsheet makes a copy of a "template" spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is more "human readable" than a regular spreadsheet. When the form is submitted, the data is saved as normal, but it also fills in certain values in the copied template sheet, sets the right permissions and mails all the people who need to know about it a link to edit the template copy. This template sheet has a "form-like" layout, including help ( shown at the right hand side ) and additional ...

This week, I saw presentations from students performing qualitative research in Archaeology. The focus of their projects was an Android/iPhone heritage app called York's Churches which   has been developed to encourage people to explore the life and history of York city centre churches. Go get the app for Android or iPhone  yourself, it's lovely. The students' projects involved a mixture of focus groups, ethnographic work and Google Forms with iPads to gather data. The projects were mainly looking at how they might better raise awareness of the application with tourists and what improvements mi The Google Forms and iPads were used in various ways, including... As a data capture tool when surveying members of the public They were used to demo the application on the street The forms were used to ease the transcribing of data they recorded with pen and paper, which might be questions that they answered themselves ( for example, "Did they se...

Google's announcement that Google Forms have been refreshed was welcome, it's always encouraging when a company updates a core tool you and your colleagues regularly use.... like say, Blogger. For example. Ahem. Ahem. Anyway, watching the videos about what had changed I notice that they've added the ability to share editing/viewing forms with people. That's great but it's sort of what I come to expect from Google, that nice Share dialog in many ways IS Google Apps. It doesn't feel like an innovation, it feels like a neglected corner being given a spring clean. The relationship between Forms and Spreadsheets has been altered. It's never been clear that when you create a Form a Spreadsheet will magically be created for the results and now you can have a Form that doesn't have an associated Spreadsheet. I'm not sure if they've made it clearer, just different. We'll see. And the demo in the video above, of being able to copy a list of ...