Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Docs gets an API for task automation

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 199 posts

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#71

Post by theDoug »

julianz wrote: post #61

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?

I suspect you have tried this, but if not,

- visit https://myaccount.google.com/language

- click on (re-choose) English

- click on New Zealand as the 'sub-language'

should set your locale across the board, rather than doing it on a per-sheet basis. If it doesn't work, as a Canadian, I empathize with your troubles and apologize.

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#72

Post by viksit »

cosmie wrote: post #47
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…

Hahahaha. I stumbled upon Flow last year when I switched jobs. Our IT/procurement process is ridiculous, so I scrounged around our intranet resources for licenses and tools that I had access to by default or could get/request access to without triggering the Eye of Sauron to gaze down upon me from the tower of IT Security. My team does analytics consulting work for large multi-agency marketing campaigns, and I used F…

I hope you got recognition for this work!

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#73

Post by jacquesm »

avip wrote: post #70
jacquesm wrote: post #24

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…

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 e…

That one should be #1 on that list of 'assumptions programmers make', with #2 being that a byte is 8 bits.

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#74

Post by Scarbutt »

jiveturkey wrote: post #54
jacquesm wrote: post #24

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…

the entire productivity suite is very much an MVP product. the killer feature is real-time collaborative work, for that aspect it's actually quite good IMHO. then for sheets, being able to work in "apps script" is fantastic. apparently you can use typescript in excel with some third party tools but surely they all stink in some way, and won't product portable documents. and anyway, VB is ok enough and has its own str…

Excel is adding JS support: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/excel/cu...

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#75

Post by AndrewKemendo »

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…

Wow, flow looks like a very powerful WYSIWYG based automator on their demo I just watched. Like they took the best of IFTTT and then baked it into business logic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EKWKJc4b4c

I've seen a handful of these over the last few years, but this one does look like it hit the right UI/UX spot.

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#76

Post by phip »

pkaye wrote: post #62
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…

Does Office 365 yet allow multiple users to edit the same document simultaneously. I really like they way it is done in Google Docs.

Yes, absolutley. It does it both in browser as well as client side provided you're connected to the internet.

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#77

Post by gipp »

avip wrote: post #70
jacquesm wrote: post #24

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…

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 e…

I had to do exactly this for my ketubah for my wedding, can confirm it was a nightmare. Had never done RTL before, let alone both on one line. Took fully half an hour just to make 4 signature lines with labels

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#79

Post by northwest65 »

irrational wrote: post #60
coldtea wrote: post #51

Earlier 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've always wondered why Google is so bad at keeping various services going

I'm starting to believe that it might be simply because low quality software is hard to maintain. They have some very complex software, but nothing of great quality. They might hire a lot of smart people, but not very many that are actually good at developing quality software. It appears that being smart doesn't make you diligent in your work, or give you an eye for detail.

Examples of this bad quality are simply everywhere; cursor left and right too fast in Google Image Search and that functionality breaks until you use the mouse to select the next image. Want to reply in Gmail, you have to click the reply button twice for the reply pane to appear. This is really basic stuff, and suggests a lack of competency in developing quality software, and a lack of care.

They are huge, but they are actually not very good.

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#80

Post by theDoug »

theDoug wrote: post #71
julianz wrote: post #61

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?

I suspect you have tried this, but if not, - visit https://myaccount.google.com/language - click on (re-choose) English - click on New Zealand as the 'sub-language' should set your locale across the board, rather than doing it on a per-sheet basis. If it doesn't work, as a Canadian, I empathize with your troubles and apologize.

I've also found visiting https://calendar.google.com/calendar/b/1/r/settings

and setting date format there useful. Not sure if it's a universal setting like the previous, though.

Post reply on HN