Presentation introducing some features of Google Spreadsheet and Google Apps Script to Ed Tech types at Dev8Ed, Birmingham 29th May 2012. A video of the session is here http://vimeo.com/43402312

1. Hacking stuff together with Google Spreadsheets
Martin Hawksey (@mhawksey)
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2. What
 Some basic spreadsheet tricks
• Filter/sort data
• Import html and feeds
 More advanced fun with Google Apps Script
• Making your own interfaces
• Integrating with other Google Services
• Remixing 3rd party APIs
 All the links used in this presentation are in
http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog <- case sensitive
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey
http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

3. Basic tricks
 =UNIQUE
 =FILTER
 =SPLIT/JOIN
 =IMPORT…
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey
http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

4. Example 1: Basic Voting System
 Using a Google Spreadsheet form as a basic voting
system
 Goto http://hawksey.info/form.html and for the question
identification enter: dev1
 What do you think will happen next with Facebook
A. They’ll become ‘The Internet’
B. Mark Zuckerberg will end up in prison for tax avoidance
C. It will be revealed that Bill Gates travelled to an alternate
universe kidnapping a younger version of himself before
enrolling him a Stanford as … Mark Zuckerberg
D. All of the above
Results
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Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey
http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

5. Example 2: Olympic Medal Table
 Pulling live data feeds from other sites (See Using
importHTML to create a Winter Olympics 2010 Medal
Map)
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Related spreadsheet Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey
http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

6. More advanced: Google Apps Script
 Google Apps Script is a JavaScript cloud scripting
language that provides easy ways to automate tasks
across Google products and third party services.
• Create custom spreadsheet functions.
• Automate repetitive processes and workflows.
• Build rich graphical user interfaces and menus.
• Link Google products with third party services.
https://developers.google.com/apps-script/
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey
http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

7. Apps Script 101
 JavaScript executed server side
 Cloud based scripting
 Can publish ‘as service’ (exposes a url for you
to hit with POST/GET)
 Integrates with Google authentication
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey
http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

8. Example 3: Custom formula to dashboard
project/course blog feeds
 Custom function to fetchUrlfromRSS()
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Related spreadsheet Related post Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey
http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

9. Example 4: Automating repetitive tasks and
custom interfaces in Fast-Tracking Feedback
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License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey
http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

10. Example 5a: Linking to other services
(Archiving Tweets – TAGS)
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Related post Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey
http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

11. Google Spreadsheet as a datastore
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey
http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

12. Google Spreadsheets as a datastore
This work is licensed under a Creative
Related post Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey
http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog

13. Questions?
Martin Hawksey
@mhawksey
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
License. CC-BY Martin Hawksey
http://bit.ly/Dev8EdGoog