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?
Google Docs gets an API for task automation
61–70 of 199 posts
Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation
#62They 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…
Does Office 365 yet allow multiple users to edit the same document simultaneously. I really like they way it is done in Google Docs.
Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation
#63That'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.
But, that's all boring work. Creating new features is a lot more fun!
Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation
#64They 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.
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.
Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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! Plus it wont be randomly cancelled when Google decides they got bored with it after several years of neglecting it first.
>they got bored with it I've always wondered why Google is so bad at keeping various services going. Your comment caused me to reflect that Google hires a lot of smart people. Smart people tend to get bored with working on the same thing and want to work on new shiny things. Could it be that the smart people at Google do a bang up job of creating new services, but then get bored and move on to something new, leaving…
Problem solvers are often (IMHO) also novelty seekers. Or looked at another way, who brags on their resume "I was hired by Google to be maintain the status quo!" Not many people want to be the Maytag Repairman. For those too young to understand the reference, Maytag's commercials suggested their appliances were so reliable that their repairman never had anything to do.
Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation
#66FYI 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…
You are missing a credentials.json file. This is not the code's fault but your own. Read the document you linked: https://developers.google.com/docs/api/quickstart/python Read directly above and below the giant blue "ENABLE THE GOOGLE DOCS API" button.
thanks - I was expecting the code itself to do the credentials dance.
Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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! Plus it wont be randomly cancelled when Google decides they got bored with it after several years of neglecting it first.
>they got bored with it I've always wondered why Google is so bad at keeping various services going. Your comment caused me to reflect that Google hires a lot of smart people. Smart people tend to get bored with working on the same thing and want to work on new shiny things. Could it be that the smart people at Google do a bang up job of creating new services, but then get bored and move on to something new, leaving…
I think it is more the Google reward system forces the smart people to work on something new. They pay out for crazy new things that become wildly successful and everything else becomes roadkill. Its like the employees are part of little startups and the executives are VCs.
Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation
#68It 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.
> 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.
Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cool thing about HN is that, by its very nature, any post that gets voted to the front page is warranted.
On the flip-side, it's easier for a large organization like Google to manipulate the post that gets voted to the front page.
Google Docs has approximately 1 billion daily active users.
Hacker News has fewer than 1 million monthly active users.
Google is a deeply polarizing HN topic, where many of any article's comments reduce to snark about longevity of Google products, or proclamations that anyone using Google services is a fool who doesn't understand privacy.
Please tell us more about your theory of Google's astroturf marketing campaign on Hacker News.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/09/google-drive-now-has-800m-...
Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation
#70I 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…
One class, or volcano, of bugs is sacredly kept only for the poor souls whos ancestors believed writing from right to left was the greatest idea ever (possibly after Monotheism). Try to write in multiple columns format in an RTL lang, then come back speaking of bugs. Then try a mixed RTL/LTR in a bulletin list. One would have thought bidi would be a solved issue in 2019, yet it consistently breaks every text editor ever made on earth.