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Google Docs gets an API for task automation

techcrunch.com

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Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#21

Post by legitster »

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.

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#22

Post by gcatalfamo »

beachy wrote: post #14

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!

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"

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#23

Post by toomuchtodo »

DoubleCribble wrote: post #17
toomuchtodo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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.

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#24

Post by jacquesm »

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.

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#25

Post by ryeguy_24 »

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?

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#26

Post by kfk »

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #25

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…

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

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#28

Post by kfk »

legitster wrote: post #21

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 Offi…

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.
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