Google Form Integrations

[lochtefeldm]

Sharing these great additions to Appsheet!

Use data from Google Forms

 

This is a beta release of creating apps and building automations using Google Forms. See Track and manage feature releases. Beta offerings are intended for use in test environments only. This feature is not recommended for use in production apps. For questions or assistance with this feature, contact AppSheet Support.

You must be a Google Workspace user to build AppSheet automations with Google Forms. See Add AppSheet to Google Workspace.

If you are using your Google Workspace account, the Google Workspace Terms of Service govern your use of Google Forms. Otherwise, refer to the Google Terms of Service.

Use data from Google Forms with AppSheet in the following ways:

• Create an app using a form from Google Forms. See Create an app using Google Forms.
• Build an automation using a form from Google Forms. See Build an automation using Google Forms.
• Use the Google Forms AppSheet add-on (described below)

Use the Google Forms AppSheet add-on

Google Forms can be used as a data source through the Google Forms AppSheet add-on, which automatically converts a Google Form to an AppSheet app. It does this in two steps:

1. Prepare analyzes the form and takes information from the form questions and adds it to the response spreadsheet as notes on the column headers.
2. Launch creates an AppSheet app from the response spreadsheet.

Understand that the AppSheet service cannot access the form directly; only the add-on (web component running in your browser) can access the form.

Caveats and limitations

Stuck on Analyzing step

Due to a limitation in Google Forms, AppSheet assumes that your response sheet is the first sheet in your workbook. If your response sheet is not the first sheet, the add-on will be stuck on the Analyzing step. Ensure that the first sheet in your workbook is your response sheet.

Add or move questions

If you add new questions or move existing questions around, the order of columns in the response spreadsheet may no longer correspond to the latest form content. You'll need to create a new response spreadsheet (using the Responses menu), Prepare, and then Launch again.

Choose AppSheet types

A subset of AppSheet column data types, like Photos and Signatures, can't be specified in a form using Google Forms. So what can you do? The simple approach is to specify a question of Text type and add a title that is suggestive of the type (for example, Customer Photo or Manager Signature). AppSheet attempts to predict the type based on the titles. You can also change the column type manually.

Images and videos

Google Forms can contain embedded images and videos. Although AppSheet forms can as well, the Forms add-on is unable to extract embedded image and video data during the automatic app creation process. These fields will be given variable URLs in the generated app that you should update in the app editor with correct URLs pointing to your image or video content. If you intend to use a YouTube video, provide the embed link, for example:  http://www.youtube.com/embed/{your-video-id})

Form navigation

Google Forms has a powerful mechanism to chain sections together using a "go-to-next" navigation model tied to answers of specific questions. At the end of every section, you can also specify to jump to another section or submit the form.

AppSheet uses a different mechanism. In AppSheet, you can specify a conditional expression that controls whether a form page should be shown. The Forms add-on attempts to automatically generate the appropriate expressions based on the structure of your form.

Most form navigation can be correctly converted to AppSheet apps automatically, but there are three main limitations:

1. Reverse navigation is not supported by AppSheet. Try to arrange your form such that all navigation proceeds to higher section numbers.
2. In Google Forms, you can include a special Other option for Multiple choice questions and assign it specific navigation behavior. However, the navigation associated with this choice is not made available to the AppSheet add-on. We recommend avoiding use of Other on questions where Go to section based on answer is enabled.
3. There is a practical limit to how much branching navigation can occur in a single form. Part of the process of converting to AppSheet's Show_If navigation model requires building the set of all distinct paths through the form. The total number of paths through a form can quickly become unmanageable when there are many sections with redundant navigation options, such as multiple questions in the same section that can send the user to the same place. Therefore, we strongly recommend using at most one navigating question per section, and marking these required whenever possible. Note that when more than one navigating question occurs in one section of a Google Form, only the last answered question will affect navigation anyway, and any others will be ignored.

For more information about building conditional branching forms in Google Forms and in AppSheet, see Create multi-page forms with conditional branching.

Advanced options

Questions in Google Forms have Advanced options that let you constrain the type of the response. This information is unfortunately not made available to the add-on. However, you can explicitly set up equivalent behaviors in the app editor.

Response summary

Google Forms has a convenient feature that shows a statistical distribution of responses. Unfortunately, this does not capture responses made using the AppSheet app. Although the underlying response spreadsheet has all the responses, the statistics are only measured on changes made through the Google Form itself. However, Google Sheets has the Explore feature that serves a similar purpose, found using the plus button at the bottom right of the Google Sheet. Click on the Explore button in your response sheet to automatically get insights into your form responses.

Triggers

If you have formSubmit triggers on the spreadsheet, they do not fire when updates are made via AppSheet. As with onEdit triggers, we recommend moving this logic to a timed trigger.

Scale questions

If your Google form has a Scale question with just two choices, there is a bug in Google AppScript that causes the AppSheet add-on to fail. In any case, a Scale question with just two choices isn't very meaningful, so we advise changing it to have at least three choices or switching to another question type.

Available in open beta: Build AppSheet automations using Google Forms

Wednesday, May 1, 2024

This announcement was part of Google Cloud Next ‘24. Visit the Workspace Blog to learn more about the next wave of innovations in Workspace, including enhancements to Gemini for Google Workspace.

What’s changing

AppSheet helps users automate manual workflows by integrating with data sources like Google Drive and Sheets, and today we’re excited to announce its integration with another data collection tool in Workspace: Google Forms.

Many companies rely on the data collected via form submissions when they are performing tasks for ticketing or incident reporting. However, prior to today you could only view information from form submissions via email, spreadsheet, or in the Forms app itself.

With this update, Google Forms submissions can act as event triggers within AppSheet Automations. These automations can then take many different actions, such as sending notifications or approval requests to Gmail or Google Chat, or even calling a custom Apps Script function. 

Who’s impacted 

Admins, end users and developers 

Why you’d use it 

This integration enables users to receive actionable notifications based on responses to Google Forms.

Getting started 

• Admins: 
• AppSheet admins can use AppSheet’s Policy Engine to control access to this feature by App Creators in their organization. Visit the Help Center to learn more about policy enforcement in AppSheet policies and specific guidance on preventing app creators from using Google Forms. 
• This feature is available as an open beta, which means AppSheet app creators can use it without enrolling in a specific beta program. 
• Developers and end users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about building automations using Google Forms. 

Rollout pace 

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on May 1, 2024

Availability 

Available for Google Workspace: 

• Business Starter, Standard, Plus 
• Enterprise Standard, Plus 
• Enterprise Essentials Plus 
• Education Fundamentals, Standard, Plus and the Teaching & Learning Upgrade 
• Frontline Starter, Standard 
• AppSheet Starter, Core, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus 

Resources 

• Google Workspace Admin Help: Prevent app creators from using Google Forms
• Google Workspace Admin Help: Define governance policies
• Google Help: AppSheet databases 
• Google Help: Get started with AppSheet 
• Google Help: Build automations using Google Forms

[Kirk_Masden]

Thanks!  A related post can be found here:

https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Announcements/Announcing-Google-Forms-Integration-in-AppShee...

[MultiTech]

Being able to trigger an automation from a google form submission, without the need to setup some script and use the AppSheet API, will GREATLY simplify some of the challenges some have faced over the years.

#GameChanger

Think about the situation for a construction company that needs to collect some basic paperwork for every person that comes on site.  

• If you required them to log in, we'd have to pay for each of these licenses - which could get very costly if you've got a large site with hundreds of people in and out each day.
• This has always been a challenge to get a system up and running that was affordable, or that doesn't require a lot of technical stuff either - so CitDevs could do it themselves.

With this update situations like this are now smooth as can be.  When someone submits the form, it can be a direct trigger to a bot!  Done, boom. (^_^)

_______________________________________________

I'm not too sure about the other part, being able to make an app from a form.  Seems to fiddly, too many limitations that one would find very annoying;  if you've been working for 3 to 4 days on getting your google form "just so", but then find out that it's not gonna work in the app... might cause some to rage-quit.

But it's still early days; will be interesting to see where things go.

• I do like that Note Parameters are taking a more prominent role; they've always been there, but it's reassuring to see core functionality being based on them again. 💪  
  • It means note parameters have a future!  (And so do my auto-tables)  wooHoo (^_^)

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Huge kudos to the teams (both AppSheet and Google Forms) for making this happen.  Thank you!

[JPAlpano]

Just tried this now and new form submissions are not triggering my bot.
The bot simply makes a copy of the submission to another table.