Collaborative Tools Project

We wanted to improve the way people at the University request new software and tools. This is a process that requires lots of people's feedback and needs to be very flexible. We need to get software experts to look at it, security teams, the support teams, teaching experts to see if is a good pedagogical match. We need the licensing to looked at and the usability and accessibility. The list is astonishingly long and in these cases it often gets so that your process map just starts to look like infinite spaghetti. No wonder it didn't quite work, infinite spaghetti is always troublesome. Much of my work involves trying to find a workable solution to a fiendish problem.. it's simplicity hunting. And when working with people around the university it's clear that they really don't want a tool that solves their immediate problem, they want abilities that solve problems like these. This is a very different thing. And besides I personally couldn't create So, out of ...

Someone asked me if they could receive an email when a document has been edited. function document_checker() {   var doc_id = "YOUR_DOCUMENT_ID_GOES_HERE"   var doc = DriveApp.getFileById(doc_id)      var last_update = doc.getLastUpdated()      var scriptProperties = PropertiesService. getScriptProperties()    var last_checked = new Date( scriptProperties.getProperty(' LAST_CHECKED') )      Logger.log( "Last checked: " + last_checked + " " + typeof last_checked )   Logger.log( last_update > last_checked )      if (last_update > last_checked){     Logger.log( "Sending mail" )     MailApp.sendEmail(" YOUR_EMAIL_GOES_HERE ", "Document has been edited", doc.getUrl() )     scriptProperties.setProperty(' LAST_CHECKED', new Date() )   }    } function setup(){  var scriptProperties = PropertiesService. getSc...

In the previous blog post , I showed how we get data from a Form and render it into a Google Document. In this post, I want to show how the Document, as it is created can have a link appended to it to another Google Form that will be used for marking that document. We have used this where people are submitting application forms and lecturers are grading those applications. First, create your new evaluation form, deciding what field will be autopopulated with data from the application form, for example, student name and institution etc. Also add the form items you want to use for marking, which might include drop down menus or multiple choice or paragraph text areas.  and then select then choose the menu Responses > Get pre-filled URL. Once you have filled in this form you will be able to add some code to your Google Spreadsheet like this... and work out which value you need to map onto the bit that says...  entry.1021949580 ...obviously all of these will need changi...

A lot of our staff are using Google Forms to gather lots of data into spreadsheets, from Grant Application forms to self assessment questionnaires and more. Spreadsheets are of course great places to store lots of data, but when that data is mainly textual , it is ridiculously hard to read and edit in a spreadsheet. Our solution has been to generate a Google Doc of the data in a row of data. Sometimes this happens automatically and is emailed to the relevant people and sometimes we add a little interface to be able to say "Make a Google Doc with this row" to the spreadsheet. The challenge is making it easy to set up. Our Solution We've used this a few times. First we create our Google Form and add some data. The spreadsheet now has a list of column headers across the top. Now, we make a template Google Doc. In Tools > Script Editor we add some code that allows us to insert the spreadsheet header names as funny tags, like this, {Username}. You could of cour...