2020 – Page 2 – By @mhawksey

New Apps Script IDE

First look at the new Google Apps Script Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Script Editor

As part of Next OnAir week 2 the focus was on ‘Productivity and Collaboration’ Charles Maxson from the G Suite DevRel team not only provided some highlights from the week, but he also premiered the new Google Apps Script IDE

Image: CC-BY mhawksey

How we survived a pandemic: Part 3 – Ups and Downs (and sideways) of life as a virtual team

In this month’s post we share some thoughts prompted by our joint talk at a virtual team day held by the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Oxford. You can access the slides from our talk here (CC-BY-SA). As we pass 100 days since the lockdown in the UK commenced we discuss the impact and look to the future as the measures start to be eased.

How we survived a pandemic: Part 2 – Music, spice and other things nice

This is a conversational blog post (cross-posted here) between Martin Hawksey (@mhawksey) and Maren Deepwell (@marendeepwell). We are using this approach to create some space to think together in ‘unprecedented times’. It’s open leadership in practice and in pandemic times. For regular readers this is a slight departure from our regular ‘Virtual Teams’ posts (you […]

Meeting around a document by Visual Thinkery is licenced under CC-BY-ND

How we survived a pandemic: Part 1 – No kind of normal

We are using this approach to create some space to think together in ‘unprecedented times’. It’s open leadership in practice and in pandemic times. For regular readers this is a slight departure from our regular ‘Virtual Teams’ posts taking a broader view of work whilst midst global pandemic.

Mail merge steps

A bulk email/mail merge with Gmail and Google Sheets solution evolution using V8

Last year I had a ‘mail merge using Gmail and Google Sheets’ contribution accepted on the G Suite Developers Solution Gallery. Just over 6 months on there has been lots of useful feedback and requests for solutions to some of the limitations of the original published script. In the meantime Google has also made the new V8 runtime for Google Apps Script generally available. Given this it seemed appropriate to revisit the original solution updating it for V8 as well as covering the most commonly asked for changes. In this post I’ll highlight some of the coding changes as well as some easy modifications.

Examples of hyperlinks in Google Sheets cells

Everything a Google Apps Script Developer wanted to know about reading hyperlinks in Google Sheets … but was afraid to ask

I’ll start off by saying this is a very geeky post and if you’ve landed here because you are struggling with extracting hyperlinks in Google Sheets then you might prefer to jump straight to Alexander Ivanov’s Extract URL’s Add-on or alternatively the Info Inspired post Extract URLs in Google Sheets Without Script. The problem: hyperlinks in Google Sheets can be in three different formats…

VLOOKUP in action

Tips for using Google Sheets for event programme planning

At the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) hosting large events is a regular activity and over the years we have developed bespoke workflows largely based in Google Sheets. In this post I’m going to share some of the tips we use for scheduling our events including drafting/publishing an event programme and how to keep in touch with your presenters.

Example JSON output

Google Apps Script Patterns: Writing rows of data to Google Sheets the V8 way

Currently one of the most popular posts on this site is my Google Apps Script Patterns: Writing rows of data to Google Sheets. Given Google’s recent announcement of the general availability of the new V8 runtime I thought it was worth revisiting this particular pattern and using the modern syntax now available to Google Apps Script developers.

Photo by Farzad Nazifi on Unsplash

Virtual Teams: So you’ve just become a remote team leader … what next? Tips on adjusting

In this post I want to share some advice and ideas for all the team leaders and managers who have suddenly inherited a virtual team. This advice comes from over two years working with my boss, Association for Learning Technology (ALT) CEO Maren Deepwell, transitioning ALT from a ‘traditional’ office based organisation to one that is fully distributed.

Repost: Openness in the age of surveillance

This is a cross-post from OpenScot.net on 28 February 2020. Less than a month on and OER20 has been impacted by the global situation and has had to move online. A number of the face-to-face sessions will no longer be run but a number will be and there is now free registration available for the reduced online programme.