Select the Label component from the lest bar:

Drop the Label component inside the Absolute Panel of the Form Panel:

Using the right bar change the Label text to: “Driving License?”:

Now select the Check Box component from the left bar:

Drop the Check Box component inside the Absolute Panel of the Form Panel next to the newly created “Driving License?” Label:

Using the right bar change the Text of the Check Box component to: “”:

Always using the right bar change the Name of the Check Box component to: “CheckBox1″:

Now we have to remove the border of the Check Box component, to do so, using the right bar, set the “Border Width” to 0:

The updated application should look like the following:

You can now save the interface and return to the Script Editor. Replace the doPost function with the following code:

function doPost(theForm) {
  var app = UiApp.getActiveApplication();
  var userFullName = theForm.parameter.userFullName;
  var userGender = theForm.parameter.genderListBox;

  // Handle the Check Box
  if(theForm.parameter.CheckBox1 != undefined) {
    var drivingLicense = "Has driving license";
  } else {
    var drivingLicense = "No driving license";
  }

  SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getActiveSheet().appendRow([userFullName,userGender,drivingLicense]);
  app.close();
  return app;
}

You can see that the status of the Check Box component is checked using the theForm.parameter.CheckBox1 variable. If the user didn’t checked the check box no parameter or variable is passed to us, so we first check if the the theForm.parameter.CheckBox1 is “undefined”. If the variable is defined means that the user has checked the check box. Using this way you can act based on the checked status of the Check Box component. Now run the function myFunction and go back to the Spreadsheet document:

Insert “John” as Full Name and click the “Submit” button:

As you can see by not checking the “Driving License?” check box the data saved corresponding to the entry is “No driving license”. Now run again the function myFunction:

This time use “Jane” as Full Name, select “Female” as Gender and check the “Driving License” check box and click the “Submit” button:

Now the value “Has driving license” is stored for Jane.

I hope this post will give you a quick way to handle check boxes in your applications.

Happy Scripting!

Select the Label component from the lest bar:

Drop the Label component inside the Absolute Panel of the Form Panel:

Using the right bar change the Label text to: “Gender:”:

Now select the List Box component from the left bar:

Drop the List Box component inside the Absolute Panel of the Form Panel next to the newly created “Gender:” Label:

Using the right bar change the ID and the Name of the List Box component to: “genderListBox”:

You can now save the interface and return to the Script Editor. Our List Box will be by default empty. To populate it we have to manually add the items needed. Replace the myFunction function with the following code:

function myFunction() {
  var app = UiApp.createApplication();
  app.add(app.loadComponent("My Custom Form"));

  // Populate the List Box
  var genderListBox = app.getElementById('genderListBox');
  genderListBox.addItem('Male');
  genderListBox.addItem('Female');

  SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().show(app);
}

As you can see to populate the List Box we have to load the component using the getElementById method, from there on we can simply reference the component by using the variable genderListBox. Adding items to the the List Box is just the matter of using the addItem method and passing as parameter the name of the item to add, in this case “Male” and “Female”. Run now the myFunction function. You should see inside the Spreadsheet document the new interface including the List Box component:

The only thing missing right now is the ability to save the List Box selection to the Spreadsheet document. To do this just replace the doPost function with the following code:

function doPost(theForm) {
  Logger.log(theForm);
  var app = UiApp.getActiveApplication();
  var userFullName = theForm.parameter.userFullName;
  var userGender = theForm.parameter.genderListBox;
  SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getActiveSheet().appendRow([userFullName,userGender]);
  app.close();
  return app;
}

As you can see the selected value is passed by the form and we can reference it by genderListBox parameter, that if you recall is the ID associated to the List Box component. Now run again the myFunction to load the interface and fill it with some sample values and hit the “Submit” button:

If everything is working you should see the Spreadsheet document being populated also by the selected List Box item’s value:

If you need additional information or you think that some topics deserve attention, just reply to this post all ideas are welcome!

Happy scripting!

Select “Blank Project” to create an empty script project and save that by using the menu item: “File -> Save”.

The editor will ask you to name the project, insert: “Custom Form to Spreadsheet” and click on the “OK” button to confirm.

Once you assign a name to the project, you can use the GUI Builder to create our own custom interface. To access the GUI Builder tool you need to use the menu item “File -> Build a user interface …”

The GUI Builder tool will load as follows:

The GUI Builder is composed by three main areas, the left bar contains components or items to be used inside your application, the right bar contains properties for the used components and the application preview area presents you a preview of your application. It’s possible to interact with this preview and edit it. Having to create a data form we must first select the “Form Panel” item from the the left bar:

Using the mouse, drag the “Form Panel” item and drop it inside the application area:

At this point, we can expand the Forms Panel item to consume most of the available space in our application. Widen it by dragging the active points (blue squares) to the desired position. We should get something like the following:

Once created our Form Panel, we can begin putting fields in the form. However as conceived by Google, the Form Panel component accepts only one child component, obviously our form can’t be composed of only one field.
The explanation is simple, in our form we have to insert a container component that represents the alignment of child components. In this case we will use the “Absolute Panel” as alignment panel, this panel allows us to insert components inside it which will be placed in an absolute manner or in the exact position in which we place them. To insert the Absolute Panel select it from the left bar:

Like before, using the mouse, drag the “Absolute Panel” item and drop it inside the “Form Panel” component:

Use the active points to broaden the component to occupy the greatest possible proportion of the space offered by the Form Panel:

Finally, we can place the components or fields of our form. We start by inserting a label selecting the “Label” component from the left bar:

The Label component has to be dragged inside the ”Absolute Panel” in the desired position, try to place it in the upper left corner:

By default, the system will assign the text “Label1″ to our component. Obviously, for us, this name is not correct so we can change it using the right bar by entering the desired text in the “Text” field of the “Text” section:

At this point our label should display correctly the words: “Full Name:”. We must now place a component that allows us to enter a value for the label “Full Name”. To do this, select the component “Text Box” from the left bar:

This component will have to be dragged to the right of the label inside the Absolute Panel:

Still using active points broaden the component “Text Box”:

By default, the system will insert “TextBox1″ as text, actually we want the field to be initially empty and then allow the user to enter their name. To do this we use, as before, the right bar and clear the “TextBox1″ value contained within the “Text” field of the “Text” section:

To allow the user to send the form we have to insert a button. Select the component “Submit Button” from the left bar:

Drag it into the Absolute Panel at the bottom left:

By default, the button will be named “SubmitButton1″ to change it use the right bar at the “Text” field of the “Text” section and insert the value “Submit”:

Now we lack a button to allow the user to clear the form, the component to be used is called “Reset Button”. Select “Reset Button” at the left bar:

Drag the component into the Absolute Panel next to the “Submit” button:

In this case, the button name is by default “ResetButton1″, change it by selecting the “Text” field of the section “Text” of the right bar and insert the value “Clear”:

In order to handle the incoming data simply, assign a friendly name to the component “Text Box”. To do so, we must first select it:

At this point, using the right bar, inside the field “ID” of the “Base” section insert the value “userFullName”:

The “userFullName” has to be also inserted inside the field “Name” of the “Input Fields” section:

Save our newly created interface by using the menu item “File -> Save”:

The GUI Builder will ask you to name the project, insert: “My Custom Form” and click on the “OK” button to confirm.

You can now return to the Script Editor to load the GUI Builder project into your application. Inside the script, enter the following code:

function myFunction() {
  var app = UiApp.createApplication();
  app.add(app.loadComponent("My Custom Form"));
  SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().show(app);
}

Now press the “play” button on the toolbar to start your script. Go back to the original Spreadsheet document, if all went well you should see the following screen:

As you can see our form has (intentionally) some cosmetic defects such as edges and the size is not appropriate. In order to solve these problems go back in the GUI Builder using the menu “File -> Build a user interface …” of the Script Editor. After loading our interface using the mouse select the Form Panel:

Using the right bar under “Border Width” field of the “Borders and Margins” section, insert the value 0:

As you can see the edges of the Form Panel are gone:

Repeat the same operation for the Absolute Panel, select it:

Always using the right bar under “Border Width” field of the “Borders and Margins” section, insert the value 0:

At this point the edges for the Absolute Panel are gone. Let’s save our project via the menu “File -> Save” and execute our script as we did previously. At this point in the Spreadsheet document should look like the following screen:

Much better. Now the real engine of the form or the ability to record the data entered by the user is missing. For this reason, go back to the Script Editor and insert the following code:

function doPost(theForm) {
  var app = UiApp.getActiveApplication();
  var userFullName = theForm.parameter.userFullName;
  SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getActiveSheet().appendRow([userFullName]);
  app.close();
  return app;
}

Everything is ready to receive and record data. We run our script again and return to Spreadsheet document to display the form. Insert the value “Sample Name” in the field “Full Name”:

Press now the “Submit” button to save the form data. As you can see the Spreadsheet document will be correctly populated with values:

Congratulations! You have created ​​your first custom form using Google Apps Script and his GUI Builder.
Of course there is much to say about creating forms with GUI Builder and Google Apps Script, this is just a starting point from where to build on.

Happy scripting!

Sales Tracking for Google Spreadsheets is a simple CRM solution developed specifically for small businesses who want to track the sales process and have return of investment data informations regarding marketing activities.

The problem:
This Google Spreadsheet was developed, as we could not find a CRM that met our simple needs. We found the use of many of these existing CRM’s took too much time entering the information, and often, we had to enter it multiple times. And yet no CRM I could find that was simple, allowed for the calculation of marketing ROI. For our business we did not need leads, opportunities, customers, archive, etc. We only had one field: PEOPLE. For our product, it’s people that buy it. We are a home service based business in Oregon.
This is a primary activity for any sales tracking, because it empowers the manager to visually see what is working and what is not. It turns the process of marketing from gambling at the casinos, to a controlled measurable equation of counting the cards. In my situation it allowed me to be have higher sales with a 7% marketing budget, rather than a 15% marketing budget. This was an enormous change in our profit. Further, this sheet influences how we interact with our customers. Also constantly evolving our system with, what is working in marketing and leads follow up each new entry.

This spreadsheet achieves:

• Simple salesperson interface using a Google Form with the intention of sales scripting.
• Calculation of marketing ROI both for all dates, and monthly dates
• Sales Follow-up: Notifying the salesperson of follow-up activity and communications. (using Future Reminders script)

Nuts and Bolts:
The spreadsheet is composed by five sheets and a Google Form and an adaptive script called Future Reminders.

Sheets:

• Names: this sheet contains all the current and past sales activities or leads, this is where all statistics are generated from. This sheet is initially filled by an embedded Google Forms that allows fast recording of opportunities, and if needed sales script process.
• ROI marketing All: this sheet tracks the overall marketing ROI
• month before Marketing ROI: This sheet is used for comparisons with the next sheet (mentioned below). The user defines what month to look at the marketing ROI for that month only
• month marketing ROI: this sheet tracks the user defined month as above, used to compare 2 months, or just examine current marketing effectiveness.
• Lead Map: this sheet by using the Google Maps service allows to see all the leads coming from the Names sheet in a geographic fashion

The Form:
This is the preferred source of data for the spreadsheet.It populates the names sheet. The form is designed to be modified by the user, to perform a guided sales script, and get information necessary for the user’s business. There are a few primary fields, or questions that are needed for data compiling in later sheets:

• name
• address
• sale closed?
• source: “how did you hear about us ( primary)?”

The Script: Future Reminders
This script checks the date of when the form was filled out, and send a reminder to the person that filled out the form on a user input timetable. It is then expected that the salesperson would call, e-mail, or do some form of follow-up when they get the reminder from the script. Further it is expected that they enter any new information into spreadsheet, and at the next reminder that information will be part of the update.

Lets Get Busy:
Let’s try to use the Spreadsheet, first you have to go to the live form to input values by using the “Form -> Go to live form” menu item: (Note: you will need to copy the sheet so it is in your google apps domain, if you want to use the form entry. This is important to note if you expect entry of data from users outside of your google apps domain. There’s a high possibility there is a solution to this, however it has not been a priority yet as the system works fine for us as this)

Fill the form with the following values:

• Customer name: Sample Customer
• Phone Number: 555
• Address: Via Boiardo 3, Mirandola (MO) Italy
• What intered in?: select Holiday LIghts from the drop down item
• Sales Chance %: select 5
• Sales Closed?: leave empty
• How did the customer hear about us? Primary: select Website
• How did the customer hear about us? Secondary: select Google
• What is the customer interested in and where?: 5 big rooms
• Roof Type: select: Cedar shingles
• Customer E-mail: put in your email address
• Customers Purpose of Calling: select Price inquiry
• Notes on Communication and sales progress.: This is the first contact
• Sale Close Date: leave empty

And hit the “Submit” button. You should see now the spreadsheet file being populated by the inserted values:

Jump over the “ROI marketing all” sheet to see what happened:

As sources are populated, by the choices made on the form fed to the source field on the “Names” sheet (or could be manually entered). The user fills in the yellow and green areas on this sheet. The yellow “cost” represents the cost of this source, in the selected time and is manually entered (this may vary between the marketing ROI all sheet, and the monthly sheets.) Be aware, the source field populates from the “Names” sheet and the sources will be in order of first entered. If the rows in the names sheet are changed (by manually entering a row above) this will change the sources order. Ultimately, the cost associated with that source should be double checked to make sure that it is the appropriate cost for that source.

Gross profit percentage: (the green field): this represents the users average gross profit. (this is best described as the percentage retained after the cost of goods sold is removed, and before expenses). The purpose of the gross profit percentage use is to determine if an advertising source broke even or not. This is one of the primary purposes of the whole entire spreadsheet.

Total Row at Top: This row compiles this critical data:

• Number of total leads to the time.
• Number of total sales for the time.
• Total $ made from all the sales
• Average cost per lead
• Average cost per sale
• Lead to close percentage

Jump to the “Month Before Marketing ROI” ( This sheet is a clone to the “month marketing ROI” they are designed to be able to compare two months side-by-side)

This sheet identical to the ROI marketing all sheet stated above, however a month can be defined in the first yellow cell (A1).
A reminder here is to always check the cost and make sure they’re appropriate for the chosen month, when the month is changed the layout of the sources will change according to the first one picked for that month in the name sheet.

Jump to the “Month Marketing ROI”
This is a clone of the above sheet. Its purpose is to be able to compare two months side-by-side, without the need to re-enter the costs for the source.

Jump to the Lead Map:
This page takes the sales leads that have been entered, and puts them on a map if their address was entered. We have found this to be extremely useful in regards to addressing if our marketing is effecting certain neighborhoods, and areas. it has also given us the advantage to contact a lead when we are in their area based on the fact that we are nearby (remember, we are an in-home service-based business so much of our work happens at the customers home)

Follow-up sequences: (Future Reminder script)
One of the most critical activities this sheet will do is send the salesperson a reminder to follow up with the customer on a given sequence of days after the initial contact until the sale closes.
This is accomplished by a custom developed Google Apps Script based on the work of Romain Vialard, and revamped by the mast Marcello Scacchetti. To access the reminder configuration open the Spreadsheet menu item “Future Reminders -> Preferences”

By using the “Select sheet” drop drown menu, you can select the source sheet for the data, by default the “Names” sheet is used where all the lead informations are stored.
The second option “Check dates” is used to specify which column contains date information regarding leads, in the default Spreadsheet date is stored inside column A.
Send the reminder to e-mail address in column allows you to specify where to read email addresses for the salespersons associated to a specific lead. In our case it’s column B.
The scope of the “Stop sending reminders” options is to tell the script to stop sending reminders if the specified column has values. Column H for example is a good setting for this option since it is the sales closed flag. When a sale is closed no more reminders are needed.
Last option is “Schedule days”, basically this field takes a comma separated list of days after which it has to send the reminder. If you set the field with the example values: 5,14,21,30 and the lead date is 01/01/2013 it will send out reminders to the salesperson on 01/06/2013, 01/15/2013, 01/22/2013 and 01/31/2013. The number of days is unlimited. A sample setting is presented here:

Clicking the “Save” button will store the desired settings.
By default the script will run automatically each day, but you can run it manually by using the menu item “Future Reminders -> Run manually”.

To use and customize this Spreadsheet make a copy of: Sales Tracking V 1.2 Spreadsheet

Hope you will find this tool useful!

For this reason I’ve created a Spreadsheet document that, with the help of Google Apps Script, will automate the Google Document merge  operation for an unlimited amount of Google Documents.

First of all make a copy of the following Google Spreadsheet document: Merge multiple Google Documents

To merge Google Documents you need the Document ID for each of them. Getting the Document ID is pretty easy, just open the Google Document you want to merge and look at the browser address bar:

The ID of the document is the string between “../d/” and “/edit”, in this example the ID is: “1uWocGqA7Bifl61Vu8-TOWpALDHic8gbc5oCuZivZ1Dg”. All you have to do is to put this ID from cell A5 of the Spreadsheet document:

You can add an unlimited number of document ids, just put them vertically from cell A5. When you have finished inserting all the Document ID to merge run the menu item “Merge Documents -> Merge”:

As result of the execution a new Google Document file will be created inside your Google Drive folder “My Drive”:

Right now this solution doesn’t play nice with images contained inside Google Documents. In the merged document images will result broken. This is a known Google Apps Script bug, you can find more informations here: Google Apps Script Issue: 1612. As soon as Google engineers fix this bug the script should work with images without problems. The only option for you right now, if you need to merge documents that include images, is to “star” the issue 1612 on the issue tracker to speed up the possible resolution.

Happy scripting!

Open the Spreadsheet document where you have installed the script, every time a script is installed, it get’s added to the “Script Manager”.

The Script Manager is a panel where you can see all scripts installed on your Spreadsheet document.

From the “Script Manager” you can:
- View all the functions provided by installed scripts
- Run a Google Apps Script function manually
- Edit the Google Apps Scripts
- Open the Script Editor

To access the “Script Manager” click on “Tools -> Script manager…” menu item of the Spreadsheet document.

To remove the installed script, you have to click on any of the function names associated with the script you want to remove and click on the “Edit” button.

When the Script Editor loads, click on the “File -> Delete…” menu item.

Click on the “Yes” button to confirm.

The Script Editor will close and you’ll return to the “Script Manager”.
Close the “Script Manager” window by clicking on the “Close” button.

As last step, you have to verify that you have really removed the script.

So re-open the “Script Manager” by clicking on the “Tools -> Script manager…” menu item of the Spreadsheet document.

If the “Script Manager” contains the string “No scripts found” or the name of the script you want to delete is not present in the scripts list means that you have successfully removed the Google Apps Script.

This is an example of a Google Apps Script removal that can be useful if you want to delete a Google Apps Script installed inside a Spreadsheet document while keeping the original document. It can also be useful to remove Google Apps Script that run periodically and automatically in background that you no longer need.

To access the “Script Gallery” click on “Tools -> Script gallery” menu item of Spreadsheet document.

When you open the Script Gallery you can find:

1. A list of script categories
2. A Search form
3. The list of scripts

You can skim through the scripts by clicking on the categories or by searching using the search form.

If you find a script that you want to install, just click the “Install” button.

So let’s try to install a script, as an example I’ll install the Gmail Meter script.
This script created by Romain Vialard, provides you a nice report about your Gmail using habits.

This kind of script requires access to Google Apps services, for this reason you have to authorize it by clicking the “Authorize” button.

Click on “Grant Access”

Click on the “Close” button to complete the script installation.

As you can see from the screenshot above, the script is installed, click now the “Close” button to go back to your Spreadsheet document.

The Spreadsheet  document will now contain a new menu named “Gmail Meter”.

Click on “Gmail Meter -> Get a Report” menu item to load the configuration options for the script. A new popup window will appear:

Choose “Monthly report” or “Custom report” by clicking on the “Get it” button under the chosen report type.

For this example, select the “Monthly report” clicking the “Get it” button under it and confirmation screen appears if everything is setup correctly.

Congratulation, you have installed your first script from the “Script Gallery”.

First of all make a copy of the following Spreadsheet document: Google Contacts Sync.

A new custom menu called Contacts should appear, click on “Contacts -> Configure” menu item, an authorization window should popup.

Click the “OK” button to proceed.

Now click the “Grant access” button to allow the script to access your Google Contacts.

Click “Close” button to return to your Spreadsheet document. Click on “Contacts -> Configure” menu item again to load the script configuration interface.

As you can see all your Google Contacts groups are loaded inside the “Select contacts group to sync” drop-down field. Select the Google Contacts group to synchronize from the drop-down field and hit the “Save button”.

This screen confirms that your settings have been saved correctly, now press the “Close” button. Everything is setup to run your first sync. Click on “Contacts -> Sync contacts” menu item to start the synchronization process. You should see all contacts of the specified group to show up inside the Spreadsheet document.

Now you can add some values inside the “Date Last Contacted” column as follows:

Simply run again the synchronization process by clicking on the ”Contacts -> Sync contacts” menu item. Now go to your Google Contacts and you should see the newly created custom field: “Date Last Contacted” populated with the specified values:

Of course you can setup triggers to run this script automatically at your preferred time interval.

The synchronization process follows these rules:

Any modification made to the contact data inside the spreadsheet will be overwritten with Google Contacts data during the sync (don’t touch please the Id column that is the reference).
Any change made to the custom “Date Last Contacted” field inside Google Contacts will be overwritten by the value inside the “Date Last Contacted” column of Spreadsheet document at each sync.

Happy scripting!

The spreadsheet is split into three separated logical column: BACKLOG, DOING and DONE. In kanban these columns are called lanes. Each lane contain items or tasks that move from the left to the right. The BACKLOG lane is dedicated to items that are ready to be processed, DOING items are things that you are currently working on, DONE items are completed tasks. A deep explanation about Personal Kanban, visualization and work in progress limiting is outside the scope of this post and I strongly suggest you to refer to personalkanban.com web site or the book: Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life by Jim Benson.

Let’s see how to use this spreadsheet, first of all make a copy of the Personal Kanban Spreadsheet.

As you can see a new menu called “Personal Kanban” has been added to the spreadsheet. By using this menu you can access all the features available for the Personal Kanban system:

Let’s start by clicking the menu item called “Add backlog item” to insert our first item in the BACKLOG lane:

As you can see an item is composed by a Title and Description, for now just fill the form with the following values and click the “Save” button:

A new item in the BACKLOG lane will be created for you automatically:

Now repeat these steps to create other 3 items as shown in the following screenshot:

To operate on items you have to select a cell belonging to the item, it doesn’t matter if you select the title cell or description cell. For this example select the cell containing the title “Second Task”. Now open the menu “Personal Kanban” and select “Move item forward”.

As you can see the “Second Task” item is effectively moved to the DOING lane and all the items into the BACKLOG lane are automatically moved to fill the gaps derived from the move operation.

Select again the cell containing the “Second Task” title and execute again the “Move item forward” operation:

The system has automatically changed the background color of the “Second Task” item to green to indicate that the item has been completed successfully. We want now to simulate something different, an item could have an issue and can’t be executed, this is said that the task as an “impediment”. Select the cell containing the “Third Task” title and execute a “Move item forward” operation:

Select again the cell containing the “Third Task” title and open the “Personal Kanban” menu.

Now select the menu item called “Set impediment on item”.

As you can see the background color of the item became red to indicate that an impediment happened on the task.

From the “Personal Kanban” menu item you can access at more operation available in the spreadsheet. You can find the Personal Kanban Spreadsheet here remember to make a copy of it.

Happy scripting!

The spreadsheet document should contain a new menu item called “Gmail Archiver”. Click on ”Gmail Archiver” menu and select “Initialize”. You should see an authorization request like the following:

Press “OK” button to authorize and follow the authorization process. Now click again  on ”Gmail Archiver” menu and select “Initialize”. You should see now a confirmation box about the successful initialization of the script.

The script created for you a new Gmail label called “Archive to Drive” and a new drive folder called “Email Archive” where Gmail messages will be stored.

Now go to Gmail and add the Gmail label “Archive to Drive” to each message you want to archive:

Now go back to the spreadsheet document and click  on ”Gmail Archiver” menu and select “Archive Gmail Messages”. After some seconds you should see a message like:

Now go to Google Drive inside folder “Email Archive” and you should see a new folder representing the exported email message:

Now entering the newly created folder you should see the email messages content saves as a PDF file and all message attachments saved as separate files:

Enjoy and happy scripting!