No-code Development

Introducing easier de-identification of Cloud Storage data

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 16:00:00 +0000

De-identification of Cloud Storage just got easier

Many organizations require effective processes and techniques for removing or obfuscating certain sensitive information in the data they store. An important tool to achieve this goal is de-identification. Defined by NIST as a technique that “removes identifying information from a dataset so that individual data cannot be linked with specific individuals. De-identification can reduce the privacy risk associated with collecting, processing, archiving, distributing or publishing information.”

Always striving to make data security easier, today we are happy to announce the availability of a de-identification action for our Cloud Storage inspection jobs. Now, you can de-identify Cloud Storage objects, folders, and buckets without needing to run your own pipeline or custom code. Additionally, we have enhanced our transforms by adding a new dictionary replacement method that can help you achieve stronger privacy protection – especially with unstructured data you might store like customer support chat logs.

The “De-identify findings” Action

The “de-identify findings” action for Cloud DLP inspection jobs is a fully managed feature that creates a de-identified copy of the data objects that are inspected. This means that you can inspect a Cloud Storage bucket for sensitive data like Personal Identifiable Information (PII) and then create a redacted copy of these objects all with a few clicks in the Console UI. No need to write custom code or manage complex pipelines and since it’s fully managed, it will auto-scale for you without you needing to manage quota.

This new action supports the following data types:

Text files
Comma- or tab-separated values
Images (see regional limitations)

Once enabled, the DLP job will perform an inspection of the data and produce a de-identified copy of all supported files into the output bucket or folder.

You can also use the new de-identify action on Job Triggers to automatically de-identify new content as it appears on a recurring schedule. This is useful for creating a workflow with a safe drop zone for incoming files that need to be de-identified before being made accessible.

What can automatic De-identification do?

Cloud DLP provides a set of transformation techniques to de-identify sensitive data while attempting to make the data still useful for your business. These techniques include:

Redaction: Deletes all or part of a detected sensitive value.
Replacement: Replaces a detected sensitive value with a specified surrogate value.
Masking: Replaces a number of characters of a sensitive value with a specified surrogate character, such as a hash (#) or asterisk (*).
Crypto-based tokenization: Encrypts the original sensitive data value using a cryptographic key. Cloud DLP supports several types of tokenization, including transformations that can be reversed, or "re-identified."
Bucketing: "Generalizes" a sensitive value by replacing it with a range of values. (For example, replacing a specific age with an age range, or temperatures with ranges corresponding to "Hot," "Medium," and "Cold.")
Date shifting: Shifts sensitive date values by a random amount of time.
Time extraction: Extracts or preserves specified portions of date and time values.

New Dictionary Replace method

When a sensitive data element is found, dictionary replacement replaces it with a randomly selected value from a list of words that you provide. This transformation method is especially useful if you want the redacted output to have more realistic surrogate values.

Consider the following example: You collect customer support chat logs as part of providing service to your customers. These support chat logs contain various types of Personal Identifiable Information (PII) including people’s names and email addresses. Cloud DLP can find and de-identify the sensitive elements with static replacements such as “[REDACTED]” to help prevent someone from seeing this sensitive data.

With the new dictionary replacement method you can instead replace these findings with a randomly selected value from a dictionary. This dictionary replacement provides two key benefits over static replacement:

The resulting output can look more realistic
Because the output looks more realistic, it can help conceal any residual names (a privacy de-identification technique sometimes referred to as “hiding in plain sight”)

An example of this:

Input:

[Agent] Hi, my name is Jason, can I have your name?

[Customer] My name is Valeria

[Agent] In case we need to contact you, what is your email address?

[Customer] My email is v.racer@example.org

[Agent] Thank you. How can I help you?

De-identified Output:

[Agent] Hi, my name is Gavaia, can I have your name?

[Customer] My name is Bijal

[Agent] In case we need to contact you, what is your email address?

[Customer] My email is happy.elephant44@example.org

[Agent] Thank you. How can I help you?

As you can see in the output, the names and email addresses have been replaced with a random value that both protects the original sensitive information but also makes the output look more realistic. This can make the data more useful and help “hide” any residual PII.

Next Steps:

To learn more about De-Identification check out our Technical Docs, try De-identification of Storage in the Cloud Console and Watch a recent Google I/O talk on De-identification of data.

Forrester names Google AppSheet a Leader in low-code platforms for business developers!

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 17:00:00 +0000

We’re excited to share the news that leading global research and advisory firm Forrester Research has named Google AppSheet a Leader in the recently released report The Forrester Wave™: Low-code Platforms for Business Developers, Q4 2021. It’s our treasured community of business developers—those closest to the challenges that line-of-business apps can solve—who deserve credit for not only the millions of apps created with AppSheet, but also the collaborative approach to no-code development that has helped further our mission of empowering everyone to build custom solutions to reclaim their time and talent.

AppSheet received the highest marks possible in the product vision and planned enhancements criteria, with Forrester noting in the report that “AppSheet’s vision for AI-infused-and-supported citizen development is unique and particularly well suited to Google. The tech giant’s deep pockets and ecosystem give AppSheet an advantage in its path to market, market visibility, and product roadmap.”

“Features for process automation and AI are leading,” remarking that, “The platform provides a clean, intuitive modeling environment suitable for both long-running processes and triggered automations, as well as a useful range of pragmatic AI services such as document ingestion."

Many enterprise customers including Carrefour Property - Carmila, Globe Telecom, American Electric Power, and Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) choose AppSheet as their business developer partner, along with thousands of other organizations in every industry. We are honored to serve these customers and to be a Leader in the Forrester Wave™: Low-code Platforms for Business Developers. We look forward to continuing to innovate and to helping customers on their digital transformation journey. To download the full report, visit here and enter your email address. To learn more about AppSheet, visit our website.

Bring no-code apps to your Gmail inbox. Here’s how.

Wed, 20 Oct 2021 17:30:00 +0000

Last week we announced AppSheet in Gmail, a new feature that lets you use custom-built no-code applications, created in AppSheet, directly in your inbox as a dynamic email. Too often, daily workflows are spread across multiple applications, slowing productivity as we navigate from one app to another and back again. By putting business apps and email in the same interface, AppSheet in Gmail helps make these frustrations a thing of the past, saving users from the breaks in focus that come with switching among multiple services.

AppSheet’s new capabilities within Gmail are powerful because previously, creating a dynamic email would have required coding skills and a lot of patience. Because AppSheet is a true no-code platform, anyone can create one, making it easier than ever to translate a great idea into software and deploy it to teammates in an easily consumable fashion. AppSheet apps can be connected to the data source of your choice, such as a Google Sheet, SQL database, or Salesforce. This is especially useful if you are creating a dynamic email, because it means you and your colleagues can update data in any of these data sources without having to leave your inbox.

How AppSheet in Gmail works

Let’s see how an AppSheet dynamic email works. In this example, we have a Travel Request app that is used for creating travel requests and sending them to an approver who can respond to them using a Dynamic Email in Gmail. Here’s what that looks like in Gmail:

Up-to-date details about the travel request are shown directly in the email, because the data source is queried for the latest data when the email is opened (that’s where the “dynamic” in “dynamic email” comes from).

Here’s where it gets interesting. The person receiving the dynamic email (here, the “approver”) can review the details, add comments and make approval decisions, and then submit their response directly from the email. This updates the app’s data source (Google Sheets, in this case).

Here’s what the Sheets data looks like after the travel request has been approved via Gmail, with the user’s approval decision (“TRUE”), approval date, and additional notes appearing in the travel request row in the Google Sheet:

And for extra extensibility, once this data is written back to the data source, it can then trigger additional automations (workflows), such as sending a confirmation email or an SMS text message.

Create your first dynamic email in AppSheet

Setting up a dynamic email takes only a few minutes. You’ll start by setting up an automation, which allows your app to detect certain conditions and then take appropriate actions. In our example, we’ve created a bot that detects when a new Travel Request is created by a user, and then automatically sends an email to the approver with key details.

Next, in the dynamic email section, from the “Use Dynamic Email” dropdown, we’ll select our “Approvals” view, since that is the view we’ll want to appear in the user’s email. Then we’ll specify recipients and optional information like additional text to include in the email:

And that’s it! With AppSheet’s dynamic emails, Gmail isn’t just one app among many where you and your teammates get work done—it’s a central destination for seamless collaboration of all kinds.

Want some more help creating your first dynamic email in AppSheet? Check out this how-to video that walks through the process step by step.

Empowering non-profit New Incentives with no-code

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 16:00:00 +0000

As people everywhere continue to adapt to new ways of working and collaborating, many trends that might have seemed a decade away in 2019, have cemented themselves as today’s blueprints for success.

We’ve seen firsthand the acceleration in demand for technology that lends itself to agile development without compromising power, ease or security and governance. Businesses cannot afford for solutions to be locked within excessively bureaucratic processes, with line-of-business workers unable to affect real progress. But they also need the solutions developed within individual teams to be manageable and secure, without all the “shadow IT” risks that often arise when teams create their own apps and services.

To help businesses balance this dynamic, we’ve provided no-code app creators combating the pandemic special access to AppSheet, Google Cloud’s no-code development platform, and we will continue to do so through December 31, 2021. Nigeria-focused NGO New Incentives is a superlative example of the organizations that have used AppSheet to achieve meaningful results.

A non-profit working to improve infant mortality rates through immunization efforts, New Incentives began their no-code journey in 2015. Balancing the needs of a global team with operations that often take place in rural areas, their IT team needed solutions to be both flexible and responsive. Projects such as their expense app helped pave their no-code journey early on, demonstrating that important applications could be developed more quickly than in the past via a mixture of technical talent and non-technical talent, as well as via tools that let IT maintain governance requirements while individual teams experimented.

“It's like building an entire ecosystem for our needs, with multi-tiered approvals, and the ability to bring in a lot of interesting, contextual information to be able to identify fraud,” said Svetha Janumpalli. “When someone's reviewing an expense, being able to see their route in Google Maps is very important to know where we’re going and operating in these very hard-to-reach, hard-to-travel areas. Like, are people actually doing what was intended?”

Pre-pandemic, most of the non-profit’s no-code app needs were focused on internal processes such as tracking of supplies, expenses, and data intake. When COVID began to emerge, they weren’t certain if their immunization program would be able to continue.

“We were thinking early on, this is going to become a problem, and what are we going to do? We basically create crowds [by organizing ways for children to be immunized against disease],” said Janumpalli. “So, we knew early on that we wouldn’t be able to continue unless we got ahead of having good mitigation measures, and unless we made the case to government stakeholders—to our Community Partners—that we take them very seriously. Because AppSheet gives us speed, we were able to introduce these apps, iterate them, and then share that information back.”

As the pandemic progressed, New Incentives leaders soon realized that AppSheet apps could be used to address external needs in addition to internal needs as communication with the external community was becoming increasingly important. “The apps are like having a portable office,” Janumpalli stated.

To help prevent the spread of COVID-19 while maintaining their ongoing mission, the organization needed to engage in an open dialogue with the community to understand and meet each location's unique needs. By building apps that let team members collect data from communities, quickly assess the data, and make changes, the New Incentives team knew they could stay aligned with those they served, even as conditions changed.

“Sometimes, there's no internet connectivity. Sometimes even cell phone communications are difficult. AppSheet helps the app user retrieve that information properly. And then it allows us to program the feeding of that data: who needs it and when they need it to make good decisions.”

Taking a community-first approach, New Incentives began collecting information on the ground from local members that could then be trickled upwards through both their communities and the organization. Not only did this help build trust in a difficult time, but it allowed for faster app iteration and faster implementation of on-the-ground changes that needed to take place. “We could take that community member feedback and instead of waiting a year, literally within a week, we could review that information and then make improvements.”

One of the solutions that came from these community-driven dialogues was their bi-hourly app. “We're a program that increases demand for immunization, but we couldn’t risk increased crowding,” Janumpalli explained. “So, we had to put in a bunch of new protocols around sanitization, hand-washing, and social distancing. We introduced this app called bi-hourly monitoring, and it was so useful that irrespective of COVID in the future, we'll keep that as part of our processes.”

While COVID is still active, the resilience that New Incentives has built into their problem-solving has provided them an opportunity to continue their mission with minimal disruption. This non-profit has helped to double rates of full immunization (increased from 25% to 54%) in the region, and COVID placed these efforts in jeopardy.

“We’re a health organization. We don’t want to introduce measures superficially,” Janumpalli stated. “I would imagine that if we didn't have this type of real-time information to have the confidence that it's okay to continue to operate, we would have had to stop operations more often out of a lack of information because it just would have exceeded our risk tolerance”

“What I hope other people understand about AppSheet is that it helps with the full spectrum,” she added. “It's not just data collection, but also how you manage that data, how you integrate that data into your team processes, how you review that data, how you gain actionable insights from that data. So for us it's data that’s actually influencing people to change and empowering managers to be able to have all the information they need to provide the right guidance and leadership to their teams.”

New Incentives is continuing their immunization efforts, scaling from an average of 5,800 new infants added to its program per month in 2020 to 27,000 for the month of June this year alone. The real-time flexibility of AppSheet combined with their innovative culture means the same small team can meet the expanding and diverse demands that will continue to emerge through COVID and beyond.

Start innovating with no-code for free.

Remote, hybrid, or office work? It's easier with no-code apps

Thu, 24 Jun 2021 17:00:00 +0000

As offices reopen, businesses aren’t keeping to a single formula. Many are embracing hybrid models, with employees splitting time between home and the office. Some are staying 100% remote. Others are returning the full workforce to offices with a greater focus on digitization.

Regardless of their model, one thing is certain: technology is more central than ever to organizations’ ability to work smarter and more effectively. In particular, organizations need technology that can be tailored to specific business needs. For example, a retail store manager may need a way to ensure improved sanitation practices, or office workers may need to create an app to manage desk reservations.

Google Workspace can help by bringing together everything you need to get things done, all in one place—including the ability to build custom apps and automations with AppSheet. AppSheet, Google Cloud’s no-code development platform, lets employees--even those with no programming experience--reclaim their time and talent by building custom apps and automations.

Building solutions with AppSheet is often easier and faster than traditional coding, as AppSheet leverages Google’s machine learning expertise to help you quickly go from idea to solution, helping your business to match the pace and agility that today’s landscape requires. In this article, we’ll explore how you can use AppSheet to create custom solutions that will help your business adapt to shifting business needs. To illustrate, we’ll focus on a use case many businesses face: reservation and management of meeting rooms and other office resources, but this process can easily be adapted for a wide variety of use cases, from apps for retail pickup to incident reporting and more.

Simplify and centralize with apps

The first thing to consider is whether your solution would be best managed via a custom interface. If you’re trying to simplify a process for someone, such as inspections or inventory tracking, or centralize information, such as resource portals or events calendars, creating a custom app is the way to go.

For this example app, we created a simple Google Sheet to hold our backend data. Sheets are ideal backend data sources when we know the amount of data will not grow exponentially, especially when piloting to a first office or group of users. We can switch our data seamlessly at any time to a scalable Google Cloud SQL database or other database if needed.

The example app has several worksheets to manage the different buildings, rooms, checkpoints and people (including their roles).

We can build an app in AppSheet directly from our Sheet by selecting Tools > AppSheet > Create an App.

After creating our app, we see an overview of the data that we’ve connected, how pieces of data relate to each other, the views that are presented to the user, and a live interactive preview of the app. Refining the app is intuitive. When you input keywords, for instance, AppSheet surfaces appropriate functionality options that can be further customized. If we have address or location data, it’s automatically turned into a map view that we can further customize.

Our office management app will offer building managers and cleaners administrative features for managing equipment, disinfection schedules, and maintenance information, and it will also offer views for employees to check occupancy and safely reserve desks and equipment.

Opening an office and then a room in the app gives us an overview of both the floorplan and the occupancy and reservations for spaces and equipment in the room.

Users can then reserve spaces and equipment in the app, without having to first search for a form or page in the intranet, or even log onto their work computer. The reservation is an automation routine in AppSheet, which performs pre-configured actions when triggered.

As illustrated in the screenshot above, when the action is triggered either by pressing a button in the app, scanning a QR code, or tapping an RFC tag, the action simply sets the “Reserved by” and “Reserved at” columns to the current user and timestamp.

Streamline with automations

AppSheet Automation, which was recently made generally available, makes it possible to reduce repetitive tasks and streamline processes even further.

In this example, one challenge you may encounter is that users often forget to release a desk or resource when they’re finished, which means those reservations stay blocked until an administrator releases all blocked reservations. However, it’s also important that resources aren’t immediately released, as they first need to be cleaned and disinfected before being made available to new users.

AppSheet Automation can solve this challenge by periodically checking all resources that have been reserved for longer than four hours, then alerting the user to either re-reserve them or release them to be cleaned. If there is no answer, the automation can trigger the resources to be cleaned, then released.

We can configure this as a recurring event, and create a bot that sends the notifications and triggers actions based on the user input (or lack of input).

Optimize for multiple roles

Creating an app for one user is one thing--creating an app that fits the needs of multiple types of users is another. AppSheet has you covered for this kind of complexity because it lets you build multiple roles into a single app.

In our office management app, for example, the office manager can have a particular view and dashboard, and workers in the office can have their own views and functionalities front and center. This makes it possible to automate tasks for all types of users with a single app.

Likewise, AppSheet Automation lets you easily react to real-time changes in data, send notifications to groups of users, and initiate additional workflows using data shared between the app and the users. If a group needs to reserve a conference space for an important late-breaking meeting, for example, there might be ripple effects across a number of user groups. The ability to automate all these updates and interactions can ultimately save a lot of time and effort.

AppSheet also supports advanced features such as QR codes, NFC, and bluetooth sensor integration. This could help users check into locations or workspaces, further streamlining the task of helping people safely navigate and collaborate within the office.

Mission critical solutions, faster than ever

In the past, the type of app explored in this article would have required a central data store, distribution to specific groups of users, management and dashboard capabilities, as well as smartphone sensor integration for NFC and image capturing. This would have necessitated a mammoth implementation project and a team of professional coders.

But with no-code, you can effectively design and implement these requirements in hours and days rather than months and years. Changes can be made on the fly in any browser, including pushing out new versions to users. Though AppSheet opens up app building and digital automations to any knowledge worker, it also includes robust security and governance controls, ensuring that as you manage getting employees back into office, you don’t neglect IT security.

Try out your own back-to-the-office app for free today at AppSheet.com, or explore and copy our sample app.

4 simple steps to make the perfect spreadsheet to power your no-code app

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 16:00:00 +0000

Making data accessible, useful and actionable in different contexts is one of the main reasons we build apps. Typically, this involves a lot of engineering, but thanks to no-code app development, even those with no coding experience can create apps from the most commonplace data repository of them all: the spreadsheet or Google Sheets.

For example, if employees in the field are recording data by hand and inputting it into Google Sheets later, all of that work could be simplified with a no-code app. Users would simply input data into the app, which would automatically sync with spreadsheets in the cloud. For many line-of-business workers, the power to replace spreadsheet maintenance with an app can lead to powerful efficiency gains. Likewise, for many enterprises, the ability to empower non-technical workers to build such apps themselves, without significant IT resources, can be transformative, opening entirely new avenues for accelerating innovation.

Getting this process started can be as simple as organizing spreadsheets such that a no-code app platform like Google Cloud AppSheet can ingest them and generate useful prototype apps for users to further build on. Though no coding is required, great no-code apps still rely on a well-designed data structure. In this post, we’ll go over the fundamentals of preparing a data source in Google Sheets to effectively build applications using AppSheet.

Here are 4 steps that can help you reduce friction in the no-code app prototyping process, simplify the maintenance and management of your app, and create a more performative and efficient data structure.

Step 1: Use clean table layouts

Before we begin laying out our Google Sheet, let’s consider a few questions:

What do I want my app to do?
What data is required to perform those functions?
What data will my users need to access?

The critical data above needs to be captured in a column or table in your Google Sheet. When grouping your columns into tables, think about what the simplest conceptual grouping would be. Imagine we’re building an app for a grocery store which keeps track of inventory. Initially we might be inclined to create a separate table for each category of item like in Example 1 - but this schema is inefficient as it creates a large number of tables we would need to manage and update individually. A better solution would be to contain all of our inventory items in a single table, and include a column which designates item categories like in Example 2.

Key Takeaway: This simplicity is important because if you have too many tables, your app will become harder to maintain and modify, and it may face sync time issues and additional potential failure points.

Step 2: Name and format your data simply and consistently

Column and table names should be kept short and easy to understand. Avoid creating long names, names with special characters, or names with strings of numerics.

Column naming and formatting conventions should persist across data sources if possible. That is, if your app is pulling data from multiple Sheets, naming and formation should be consistent across all of them. Following these guidelines will ensure that your data is easy to understand, increase the likelihood that the prototype app interprets data as desired, and make it easier to employ expressions within your app.

Step 3: Use columns for categories and rows for entries

When new data is added in an AppSheet app, it will be appended to your sheet in the form of a new row. It’s important to ensure that the structure of your spreadsheet is uniform, and that is built such that each row represents an entry and each column represents a category for type of entries. To understand what this means, let’s look at three examples.

Example. 1 - Inverted inventory table

In this first example, we can see that the desired structure is inverted. Data headers are arranged vertically, and new entries representing inventory items are added as columns. This arrangement will prevent AppSheet from adding new rows; it should look more like the “ideal table layout” in the previous section.

Example. 2 - Interrupted inventory table

This second example spreadsheet contains a section that is meant to be used as a calculator. Because this interrupts the structure of the spreadsheet, however, it will prevent new rows from being added. Tables must remain structurally consistent across their entirety, and they must consist of only column headers and ensuing rows of data. If you have a section such as a calculator which interrupts the overall structure of the table, you’ll need to either integrate it into the original table structure like Example 3, or relegate it to its own independent table.

Example. 3 - Integrated Calculation Fields

Key Takeaway: Duplication is a related structural pitfall to watch for. If you notice that large blocks of data are being duplicated in multiple tables, this is a good indicator that your data structure may not be as efficient as it could be, which could contribute to extended sync times for apps.

Step 4: Add a key column

Every table must include a key column that serves as a unique identifier for each row of data. For some types of data, each row will naturally contain a column which is unchanging and unique for each row. A good example of a naturally unique key is a product ASIN or SKU - no two products will have the same. Similarly, an employee identification number or email are good unique keys, as no two individuals will have the same one. For data that does not have this property, we can easily generate one using the UNIQUEID() function in the AppSheet editor. If you want to learn more about keys, see our help documentation on the subject.

It’s time to create your first no-code app

If you’ve been following each of the above mentioned steps to structure your data, you should be ready to turn your data into a powerful no-code app. To get started, open up Sheets with your data, and go to Extensions>AppSheet>Create an App. From there, Appsheet will automatically read your data and turn your spreadsheets data into a no-code app to drive powerful efficiency gains.

For a deeper dive into this topic, be sure to see our article on spreadsheet best practices and this webinar, and feel free to jumpstart your no-code journey with our library of sample apps. If you run into any issues building your apps, check out our help articles or ask a question on the AppSheet Community.

We’ve been truly inspired by the apps already created by tech-savvy creators like you, and can’t wait to see what you create next.

Ready to use AppSheet? Get started now.

How to automate with AppSheet Automation

Wed, 28 Apr 2021 16:00:00 +0000

AppSheet Automation is now generally available, and in this article, we’ll explore how you can build your first automation bot, all without writing a single line of code.

This brief tutorial, using the use case of onboarding new employees, will explain how you can automate the process with AppSheet Automation. This same framework could be applied to any use case that involves auto-generating an email when a new entry is added to your data source; be it engaging new subscribers to your side hustle blog, or to schedule an email for a recent work order request.

Before you begin, you will need an app in which to frame your automation. You can use one you’ve already built or you can get started with this sample app (Select “Copy and customize” option, choose a name for your app).

Automating any process within your application, in this case onboarding new employees, involves three simple steps.

1. Creating a bot

2. Configuring the event and process

3. Testing your bot

We’ve included a video below that explains exactly what these components are and how they work together.

Step 1: Creating a bot

Follow the steps below to create a new bot:

1. From the AppSheet UI, click on “Automation” from the left menu, navigate to the Bots tab and click on + New Bot.

2. Type ”employee send email” into the dialog, which will trigger suggested bots to appear, as shown in the image below.

3. Select the highlighted suggestion above “When a new New Employees record is created, send an email” (Click on Create a custom bot if you don't see any suggestions and follow along instructions on the video to manually create your bot).

4. At this point a completely implemented bot is ready to get to work. Let’s tweak some settings so it sends the email to the right email address.

Step 2: Configuring the event and process

A bot has two main components: An event (when something happens) and a process (perform a sequence of tasks).

Event:

1. Click on the event and its definition should render in the settings pane to the right.

2. If it looks like this (below) you are good to go to the next step.

Process:

1. Click on the “send an email” step in the process and its definition should render in the settings pane to the right.

2. Click on the “Go to: Task” link at the bottom of the settings pane to navigate to the task definition.

3. You can leverage the full expressive power of the platform to customize and format the email content including using templates. Refer to the table below for the rest of the task configuration:

Your task should now look like this:

4. Click Save to save all your changes.

5. Let go ahead and deploy your app. Click on the blue “Not Deployed” icon on the top left of your screen and go through the deployment wizard to deploy your app. Your app should show the green “Deployed” state as follows:

6. You are all done configuring your bot.

Step 3: See your bot in action

Now that you are done building the bot, let’s take it for a spin.

1. Click the mobile device icon on the top left of the right hand pane to see the “New Employees” view (alternatively you can navigate from the left hand menu to UX → Primary Views → New Employees)

2. Click on the big blue “+” icon to create a new employees record. Add employee details (make sure to add your own email address) → Click Save → This new record should sync automatically (if not click on the red icon on the top right to perform a sync.)

3. You should get an welcome email to the email address you entered in the previous step.

Note - In addition to adding employees via the app, you can also configure this bot to send an email if data in the underlying sheet is updated directly. To do that you will need to ensure that Sheets is configured correctly for external eventing. This video will take you through that process.

Congratulations! You have just created and enabled your very first bot, without writing a single line of code . From here, just ensure your application has been deployed, and your bots will do the rest while you reclaim your time. If you run into any issues building your automation bot, check out our help articles or ask a question on the AppSheet Community.

Ready to use AppSheet Automation? Get started now.

Part 2: Hackathons aren’t just for programmers anymore

Thu, 22 Apr 2021 16:00:00 +0000

As we discussed in our recently published article, no-code hackathons are a great way to empower line-of-business workers and encourage innovation, but they sometimes require different planning steps than traditional hackathons aimed at coders. In this article, we take a look at three questions you should ask yourself to refine the event’s goals, as well as a four-step planning framework and best practices we’ve seen adopted by users of AppSheet, Google Cloud’s no-code application development platform.

One thing to keep in mind: just like a no-code, custom business app, the beauty of a hackathon lies in the fact that each one is a customized effort based on your specific goals. Once you refine your goals, use the framework to build your hackathon. And once you’ve successfully managed your hackathon event, you can use that experience to inform the next one.

Three questions to refine your goals for a hackathon

The hackathon will be many employees’ introduction to the concept and promise of no-code programs, so before any planning for the event itself can occur, enterprises need a refined sense of what the program should achieve and how it will fit into existing operations.

1. What does innovation look like for your organization?
Innovation can mean a number of different things--removing manual processes, improving efficiency in the field, digitizing workflows, and more. Identifying what kind of innovation you hope to spur is important to introducing a no-code platform, and its potential, to the workforce. That said, it is important not to over-prescribe goals: one benefit of democratizing the tools of innovation is that employees often discover and solve challenges that had previously gone unacknowledged.

2. What types of organizational and governance structures will support the no-code program?
It’s obviously powerful to extend app building to more employees, but businesses still need to ensure that no-code efforts don’t redundantly overlap with IT projects. Likewise, they need to avoid Shadow IT problems in which IT lacks visibility into no-code projects, and they need to apply security protections to the corporate digital assets leveraged for no-code apps. All of this means governance and organizational models are important to a successful no-code rollout.

In an IT-centralized model, IT teams create nearly all of the applications to address an organization's needs. In an IT-decentralized program, the broader organization develops the applications within the governance framework provided by IT. Both can encourage non-technical employees to become no-code citizen developers, but they do so in different ways.

For example, in an IT-centralized model, business users might use the no-code platforms to build prototypes, the final versions of which are built by IT. In an IT-decentralized model, non-technical employees throughout the organization might build their own solutions according to governance guardrails set by IT.

3. Beyond hackathons, how will you encourage citizen development?
A hackathon is a great way to drive engagement and hands-on learning, but it’s not the only way to inspire the workforce--and even after a successful hackathon, organizations still need educational and community-building resources to maintain momentum. Many such resources are available, such as AppSheet’s Creator Community. It’s important to look for resources that already exist outside the company, but many successful no-code programs have also invested in internal resources, such as recurring office hours with experts or onboarding programs specific to the company’s goals.

Four key steps for planning a successful no-code hackathon

The preceding questions are a starting point for defining the no-code program’s intentions--but planning and holding a hackathon involves a few more steps. This four-part framework offers some best practices to ensure the event is organized based on your organization’s unique needs.

1. Define your objective
This may seem obvious, but an organization is unlikely to succeed if it holds a hackathon just for the sake of holding an event, without clear goals and intentions. With digital fatigue running rampant, employees aren’t always primed to accept new technical solutions--so to cut through the noise and inspire the workforce, it’s critical to define what the event should achieve.

The goal might be to align your organization's goals with actions individual citizen developers or teams of citizen developers can take. It might be identifying manual tasks that could be automated or potential long-tail solutions. There is no single approach, but often, successful no-code hackathons focus either on functionality or use cases. When a hackathon focuses on functionality, they are often more open-ended but also more likely to produce novel ideas or call attention to challenges that are familiar to line-of-business workers but unknown to leaders. Hackathons built around a specific use case or challenge can be more targeted, but they can also be overwhelming to new citizen developers who are still learning how the no-code platform lets them harness different kinds of functionality.

For example, let’s say my objective is to focus on removing paper from my company’s business processes. The key is not to tell hackathon participants what kind of app to build because I don’t know all the issues they might be struggling with. But every app must digitize something that is now being executed manually. That will be my main criteria for any hackathon app. Of course, I will need to develop a list of questions whose answers will ensure that my objective is being met. These questions will also help my new citizen developers formulate an app building plan and for the most part should focus on the following areas:

Problem. Describe the manual process you want to digitize as well as the paper you want to remove from your process and how it applies to the stated objective.
Scope. Describe what areas of business the problem impacts—is it within an individual scope, or a department, or cross-departmental?
Data. Describe the underlying data you want to digitally capture, where it resides today (in a filing cabinet, transposed to a doc or spreadsheet) and where it should reside electronically.
Solution. Describe how you plan on resolving the problem—how is the app you propose to build going to address the problem? What capabilities does the app need? What features on the app building platform will you be using?
Success metrics. How do you measure success? An increase in productivity measured by a decrease in time spent? Reduction of paper measured by amount digitized?

Recommended best practices: This may seem like a lot of information to collect early in the hackathon process but it provides a structured way to look at an ongoing problem and resolve it. Most citizen developers are new to app building and this type of methodology teaches them how to approach an app building project. This type of approach also serves as a way for departments to identify process issues that may be known or unknown—those long tail applications that provide incremental value and when taken together, may exceed the value of larger, more complex applications. Finally, consider building an app on your no-code platform to collect this information. This signals two things: an overall commitment to digitization as well as a commitment to the platform as the digitization vehicle.

2. Cultivate executive buy-in
Hackathons are usually more successful when company leaders advocate for them. Employees may be uncertain about new technology platforms and tools if the intentions behind and benefits of those resources have not been clearly communicated. Similarly, employees accustomed to existing processes may not adopt new ones if incentives and goals have not been refreshed. These efforts require executive leadership, and when businesses successfully navigate large shifts in technology, the CTO or even CEO is often involved.

Recommended Best Practices: Successful hackathons rely on participation and support from the leadership team as well as IT and line of business management. This participation indicates that citizen development is part of the corporate culture and has the support of the entire company. One member may be designated as the owner or multiple members may be given roles—the more active the support, the more likely it is for employees to get involved. There should be active involvement from the leadership team to promote all hackathon aspects:

Encourage participation. Promoting the hackathon throughout the company via all forms of communication, including email, company and LOB meetings, newsletters, collaboration apps like Google Chat, Slack, or Microsoft Teams, etc.
Acknowledge milestones. Provide snapshots of the hackathon as it progresses, including number of teams participating, number of departments, number of apps being built, first app to be tested, etc. Along with normal forms of communication, consider setting up a Hackathon community page and actively post to it.
Formalize the effort. Host a company-wide event to acknowledge and reward participants. Perhaps the hackathon is a success metrics contest where the winners and runner up receive a prize but make sure that all participants are recognized for their valuable contributions.

3. Anticipate hackathon participants’ needs
Whether a professional or citizen developer, the principles of application development are the same. While no-code application development requires significantly less technical knowledge than traditional application development, it will require training, both during and outside of a hackathon. The more you anticipate, and provide, the necessary training, the more successful your hackathon will be.

Recommended best practices: We’ve seen successful programs that bring in outside experts to guide non-technical workers, others that appoint internal experts, others still that focus on self-learning modules--and some that combine all three. All of these approaches are generally more productive when combined with community-building efforts.

For example, throughout last year, our Creator Community created incredible apps and made them available to fellow community members. COVID-19 Community Support App is one such great example, and the app has now been translated into over 100 languages by creators around the world. Similarly, we saw a number of citizen developers rally around each other during a global hackathon to build COVID-19 support apps, relying on self-guided resources and community support. We’ve also seen companies such as Globe Telecom invest not only in hackathons but also in making experts available for weekly office hours. Many organizations have successfully built citizen developer ecosystems by creating spaces where questions can be posed and discussed. Programs that include specific examples of no-code apps are usually more powerful.

In designing training programs, it can be easy to overlook that hackathon participants need assurances that it is okay to make mistakes--which reinforces the importance of governance. It can also be easy to neglect the data management training that can help citizen developers more easily adopt a no-code platform.

Measures of success are another important training component. Are no-code apps meant to be deployed across the entire organization, to be used by select teams, or to serve as foundations for future proposals? Is a no-code app’s success quantified by hours saved working on a process, number of users for a specific app, or some other metric?

4. Ensure you don’t miss the final ingredients
There are three components, often overlooked, that will determine the overall success of a hackathon:

Make it fun. Gamification can be a terrific way to generate enthusiasm. When an organization incentivizes budding citizen developers with recognition or awards, interest in the no-code program often skyrockets.
Build awareness. No hackathon will succeed if employees aren’t aware of it, so organizers and the leadership team need to get people excited by marketing the event.
Galvanize participation. Will hackathon participants operate as individuals or as members of a team? Most likely, this decision will depend on a number of factors specific to your company with the end result being more employee participation.

Recommended best practices: Gamifying a hackathon cannot only generate enthusiasm but also serve as a way to attract more participants. But don’t just focus on the awards aspect for the winners and runner ups. Think of ways to make it fun for all participants. For example, hackathon T-Shirts, trophies, or plaques for everyone. Or fun award categories for best app idea, first deployed app, etc.

With or without prizes, no hackathon will succeed if employees aren’t aware of it, so organizers and the leadership team need to get people excited by building awareness through marketing the event. The promotions could range from newsletter blurbs to advertisements on internal sites to references during all-hands meetings-- but whatever the venue, this is your chance to communicate both the ways no-code can be empowering as well as any competitions or rewards that the event will entail.

Additionally, one can neither devise gamification strategies nor advertise the event without determining whether hackathon participants will work individually or in teams. Which approach works best may depend on a range of factors, such as whether the organization uses an IT-centralized or IT-decentralized model. But generally, individual participants tend to focus on specific goals whereas teams, by virtue of including more perspectives, can promote community and exploration. If you choose to go with teams, we recommend that you solicit cross-departmental teams or teams from different departments, as this is likely to diversify the solutions and conversations that the hackathon facilitates.

Finally, don’t forget the closing ceremonies! Whether it’s a live judging panel or simply distribution of awards, find a way to celebrate everyone that participated. This goes a really long way in helping the program to gain traction.

Keep the momentum going!

With the preceding questions, framework, and best practices, you’re well on your way to holding a no-code hackathon. Congratulations! But what comes next? Here are four ways to keep the momentum going:

Hold a post-mortem with your team. What are your main takeaways from this event? Should you host another event in the future? Are there any additional goals you need to consider for future events? What would you change for the next one?
Measure your success. Did you meet your objective? Was participation in line with expectations? Did you require a wait list for the event or is the entire organization now trained? What areas can you focus on for your next hackathon?
Double down on citizen development across your organization. After you’ve held your first hackathon event, there will be buzz around all that was accomplished. Those who were not able to participate in the first will likely want to attend the next. If you haven’t already marked your calendar for the next one, determine what date makes the most sense.
Keep a channel open for support. One of the most exciting parts about no-code hackathons is that citizen developers feel empowered to tackle new and bigger problems. In order to achieve this, they need outlets for support. We highly recommend either creating an internal channel for conversation, such as a citizen developer chat room, or pointing them towards a citizen developer community.

We hope you will take this framework and convert it into something that not only meets the unique needs of your organization, but also helps propel you toward a more innovative future. Whether this is just the beginning of your organization's citizen development journey or the next step in an ongoing digital transformation, the possibilities are endless, and we’re excited to see what you build. Click here to learn more about AppSheet, and jumpstart your no-code journey with our library of sample apps.

What no-code automation looks like with AppSheet

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 18:30:00 +0000

As developers, we talk about automation in the context of technology as often as your friends might talk about Bitcoin — and for good reason: automation has spanned the farthest corners of cloud computing, from infrastructure as code, container orchestration, and DevOps to machine learning and even billing management. It’s making life easier for infrastructure operators, developers, SecOps engineers, and cloud admins by saving them time, which, as we all know, is a finite resource.

More recently, automation has played a pivotal role in not just productivity gains, but also democratizing technology for citizen developers. Google Cloud AutoML for example, has lowered the barrier to entry for machine learning through pre-built models and automated model creation.

And now AppSheet is taking the baton and bringing automation to its platform with the GA release of AppSheet Automation. AppSheet is Google Cloud’s intent-aware, no-code application development platform that lets you create applications faster and with less investment than a traditional code-based approach. As an extension of the AppSheet platform, AppSheet Automation offers new, integrated workflow automation capabilities. It leverages Google AI to make it easier to automate business processes, and empowers those without coding skills to reshape their work with features like smarter extraction of structured data from documents and compatibility with a wide range of data sources like Google Workspace Sheets and Drive.

AppSheet Automation reclaims developer time

I recently had Jennifer Cadence, Product Marketing Manager for AppSheet, on the GCP Podcast, and she helped paint a clearer picture for me:

“Employees are losing an estimated 20% of time to tasks that could be automated¹. It’s also mindspace and time we could use to focus on high impact work.”

Even as developers, we spend time on manual tasks that lengthen development time or add item after item to our list of things to do. We get requests from business groups to create applications to do things like invoice processing, employee onboarding, and integration with third-party systems. My good friend, John, for example is a data scientist who is still responsible every week for reporting data from a dashboard into a Google Sheet — something he finds frustrating and feels should be automated, so he can focus on high-value work like data experimentation.

Likewise, in the past I’ve spent hours on approvals, updating metrics from Salesforce into Sheets, or building an automation that extracts text from a Sheet into a Doc. For employees doing the same, it's not surprising retention can become problematic. The times I’ve felt the most fulfilled by and creative at my job have been when I get to do more impactful work.

AppSheet Automation is designed to give time back to developers and practitioners, and to democratize app development for business users. You can take reasonably complicated ideas and processes and translate them into working apps by using the platform to express them through automation. Technical audiences will see two benefits:

Reduce development time by implementing solutions without coding.
Reduce backlog by empowering the line of business users who are closest to the problem to build their own solutions. Our survey of early adopters shows that over 60% of those engaging with AppSheet Automation have an in-house solution but are seeking something more efficient.

Let’s talk about how.

Automation of course!

Through the Automation tab in AppSheet, the first new addition you’ll find are Bots, which are used to create automations by combining events with processes. This is the core of what makes AppSheet Automation easy to use. You envision a process or idea, and structure it intuitively here.

Bots can be configured to trigger a process on detection of an event (e.g., a new employee record is created in a Google Sheet), or according to a predetermined schedule. Once enabled, bots run in the background, listening for event triggers.

Bots work with your connected data source, and can be created or modified with a few clicks. Changes made are reflected in real time in the app editor so you always know what your automation consists of.

Events occur when data is changed (e.g., the priority of a service ticket is changed from low to high) or periodically on a schedule (e.g., every Monday morning at 9 AM).

A Process is a sequence of steps (control steps and tasks). A simple process may have just a few steps, such as conditional branches or email tasks, and complete quickly. But a process can be complex, have multiple steps, and take hours or days to complete. It can:

Loop over many records
Call another process
Wait for a human to respond to a request

A Task is a simple activity that runs quickly, like “Send an email,” “Change data,” or “Call a webhook.”

Modularity is a key design principle of AppSheet Automation. Tasks, Events, and Processes are reusable components. Tasks can be reused in multiple processes. Processes can call other processes. Processes and Events can be reused in multiple bots. This allows for “create once, reuse multiple times” strategies.

Intelligent document processing

With AppSheet Automation, you can also leverage intelligent document processing, which uses Document AI to automatically detect invoices, receipts, and forms from documents, PDFs, and images, and to trigger automations and natural language processing. AppSheet Automation connects to documents (and folders) in Google Drive. In the case of documents, you can choose from one of three currently supported types:

Invoices
Receipts
W-9 forms

Intent-aware

Unlike code-driven platforms, AppSheet is a no-code, intent-driven platform. The platform infers the intent of the app being built, which makes the creation and customization process much easier than other options.

It uses natural language processing, anticipates the intent of the creator based on keywords, and surfaces contextual suggestions. For example, when you type in “Issue Resolved,” the platform presents bot suggestions. After you select one of them, you have a completely implemented bot ready to go with the event configuration, expressions, the process, and steps.

Suggestions are surfaced at multiple levels. When you click to add a new step and start typing in a keyword “re(turn)”, it presents contextual suggestions that make authoring simple and intuitive.

Integration with external data sources

In many cases, you need to integrate data from both internal and external company sources, like databases, Airtable, or Box, which requires developer expertise. Remember John, the data scientist? He’s one of a handful of scientists, and his developer team is limited. They can’t afford to spend time learning how to integrate new tools that aren’t part of their primary job, which is why AppSheet and its ability to integrate data sources can be invaluable.

It supports various data sources, including Google Workspace, Microsoft Excel, AWS DynamoDB, Dropbox, API management platforms like Apigee, and cloud/on-premises databases. Once you point AppSheet to your data source, it uses machine learning to understand the schema/structure of your data, including dependencies and relationships, and it develops relevant suggestions for bots, events, processes, and steps.

You can also tap into Sheets, Drive, and Salesforce through external eventing to create a more streamlined automation experience.

How to get started

AppSheet Automation offers intelligent process authoring and rich connectivity, introduces bots, and addresses the long tail of human-centric processes, document based workflows, and app integration use cases. The onus of creating human-centric app workflows no longer needs to fall on development teams, and when it does, AppSheet Automation can help significantly reduce development times. Survey results show that AppSheet Automation has reduced the amount of time to develop automated solutions and time spent on manual tasks.

Sample apps

There are a ton of sample apps to get you started. Just login to AppSheet.com and head to “Sample apps” at the top.

Videos

We also have many videos to help you learn how to automate processes, integrate with Workspace, build UIs, deploy your apps, and more.

Online community

There’s already a vibrant community around AppSheet, so check out community.AppSheet.com to join the conversation and engage with other creators from around the world. You can find helpful answers, submit feature requests, and explore AppSheet resources.

Head to AppSheet.com to start building with no-code!

You can find me on Twitter at @stephr_wong.

¹ Jobs lost, jobs gained: What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages How Much Time Are You Wasting on Manual, Repetitive Tasks?

Reclaim time and talent with AppSheet Automation

Wed, 14 Apr 2021 16:00:00 +0000

Digital transformation has been an enterprise priority for years, but recent Google Cloud research reinforces that the mandate is more pressing today than ever, with most companies increasing their technology investments over the last year. While there are many dependencies shaping the future of work, the challenge is to leverage technology to support shifting work cultures. Automation is the rallying point for this goal.

According to research firm Forrester, “Automation has been a major force reshaping work since long before the pandemic; now, it’s taking on a new urgency in the context of business risk and resiliency… As we emerge from the crisis, firms will look to automation as a way to mitigate the risks that future crises pose to the supply and productivity of human workers.”¹

Last fall, we announced early access for AppSheet Automation, a significant addition to AppSheet, our no-code development platform, that leverages Google AI to make it easier to automate business processes. Today, as part of our mission to further support the future of work, we are making AppSheet Automation generally available (GA). AppSheet Automation empowers even those without coding skills to reshape their own work with powerful new features including smarter extraction of structured data from documents and compatibility with a wider range of data sources like Google Sheets and Drive.

AppSheet Automation eliminates busywork

By making it easier to automate business processes, AppSheet Automation helps enterprises reduce IT backlogs and save money, while addressing possibly the most pervasive talent headache of all: busywork associated with manual tasks. A recent survey of AppSheet Automation early adopters found that 64% of those leveraging AppSheet Automation were able to focus on high-impact work rather than manual tasks. By harnessing the power of automation, talent can reclaim lost time while providing more space for high impact work.

Manually entering receipt data or tracking down paper copies is time consuming, for example. But with AppSheet Automation’s Intelligent Document Processing feature, these tasks no longer need to be inefficient. Unstructured data such as invoices, receipts, and W-9s can be automatically extracted from documents, all thanks to Google Cloud’s Document AI. Process automations such as these help organizations to reclaim time and talent spent on repetitive tasks, empowering a company’s talent to spend more time on strategic and impactful work.

Extract unstructured data with Intelligent Document Processing

Growing adoption of AppSheet Automation

Enterprise customers from around the world in a variety of industries are already using Google Cloud’s no-code application development platform, AppSheet, to empower their employees to build powerful business applications. Globe Telecom, a leading full-service telecommunications company in the Philippines, has built more than 50 business apps, within 8 weeks, with AppSheet, for example.

"We've always been on the lookout for grassroots innovations among our employees at Globe. It is something that we're very keen on cultivating for our people. AppSheet gave us this flexibility – the perfect tool to mine these innovative minds. It allows us to quickly execute and transform how business is done and improve how we serve our customers," said Carlo Malana, Chief Information Officer at Globe.

Similarly EBSCO, one of the largest privately held, family-owned companies in the United States, has been working to discover how the union of no-code app development and smarter automation capabilities can increase workforce efficiency. They have been using AppSheet Automation for tasks ranging from auto-ingesting W9s during employee onboarding to eliminating process gaps.

“AppSheet Automation lays the groundwork for many automation projects to come, which will increase the speed of deployment, as well as provide better insight into automation processes, as the build process forces you to visually lay it out,” said Matthew Brown, IT Architect at EBSCO.

Improving workforce collaboration with AppSheet Automation

With this GA announcement, we are extending AppSheet Automation’s data source eventing support beyond Salesforce to also include Google Sheets and Drive, which will make collaboration even easier while keeping IT governance and security top of mind.

Looking ahead, we’re also building the ability to embed rich AppSheet views in Gmail to perform approvals on the go. This will allow users to perform process approvals without having to leave their current interface and helps save time.

A look towards the future with app views accessible within Gmail

As automation extends the power of no-code, organizations around the globe will find new and creative ways to engage with their workforce. Technologies such as AppSheet empower the people working within today’s highly distracted business landscape, helping them to spend more time on the work that matters and to do things they couldn’t do before. We believe this human-centric approach, which balances the needs of line-of-business workers with required IT governance and security, is important to supporting enterprises to become both more empathetic and efficient, and we’re thrilled to see how you use AppSheet’s new automation features.

Ready to join the conversation? Start building for free and join our AppSheet Creator Community to engage with Creators from around the world.

^{1. Forrester Research, The COVID-19 Crisis Will Accelerate Enterprise Automation Plans, May 5, 2020}

Part 1: Hackathons aren’t just for programmers anymore

Tue, 09 Mar 2021 19:00:00 +0000

Companies and organizations all over the world hold hackathons to help their software developers sharpen skills, improve collaboration, cultivate creativity, and experiment with new ideas. But what about non-technical employees? Is coding ability a prerequisite to participating in hackathons and creating technical solutions?

Thanks to no-code application development, the answer is no. Whereas non-technical employees would have been relegated to sideline roles in hackathons a few years ago, today’s businesses are increasingly investing in platforms that let anyone build apps and technology optimizations without writing any code. Hackathons needn’t apply only to software developers, and with no-code tools, “non-technical” employees can transform into “citizen developers” who are empowered to use technology to build creative solutions.

From apps that manage inventory and logistics to apps for collecting data in the field to process optimizations that automate time-consuming steps, scores of solutions are needed but never built because traditional developers have finite resources and time--but no-code and citizen developers can change all of that by democratizing the tools of innovation.

AppSheet, Google Cloud’s no-code application development platform, was built for this democratization, and we’ve observed across many of our customers that hackathons are an excellent way to kickstart citizen development programs and inspire the workforce.

For example, Globe Telecom, a leading mobile network provider in the Philippines, anticipated 30 or so teams for its first no-code hackathon--but employees were so enthusiastic, over 100 teams applied to participate. The winning app helps optimize workflows for discovering illegal signal booster activity, which can be a threat to the integrity of Globe’s services, and other finalists included inventory management apps for the company’s retail outlets, development planning and evaluation apps to help employees collaborate on goals in real-time, and even a vehicle maintenance app that includes gas price reporting. These kinds of projects don’t replace traditional IT, but they provide a pathway for apps that IT never would have time to build and pick some of the low-hanging fruit in the IT backlog. As a result, just as no-code can empower citizen developers to build solutions, it can also free up traditional developers to work on more sophisticated or strategic initiatives.

To help your business enjoy these benefits, today we’re kicking off a two-part series to help your organization run a successful no-code hackathon. In this article, we’ll explore some of the benefits you can expect from your hackathon as well as the goals you should keep in mind, and in our next article, we’ll dive into a framework to help you pull off the big event.

How no-code hackathons drive value

Though no-code hackathons can produce fantastic apps, the goal is not per se producing an astonishingly innovative app out of the gate so much as creating the culture in which citizen development can thrive in partnership with classical IT over the long run.

Hackathons promote no-code app development. One of the foremost goals is of course defining what citizen development is and creating space for employees to experiment with solutions. Often, non-technical employees are uniquely positioned to assist with solving common problems simply because they are the ones that encounter these issues each and every day. Imagine a developer trying to assess an operation lead’s request for an application that handles equipment assessment tracking and requires a multi-step approval process for 20 employees on a manufacturing floor. Because the people working on the manufacturing floor are likely the only ones intimately familiar with this task and its pain points, it could take a traditional developer countless cycles to achieve the desired result—and that’s if the manufacturing team can make a successful case to have the request added to the IT backlog in the first place. But with a no-code platform, the people working on the manufacturing floor can actually build the app themselves. Citizen developers are powerful because they are often the subject matter experts who can describe the need and the process--and to unleash that power, they simply require a platform and program to help them execute.

Hackathons drive platform adoption. By communicating the potential of citizen development, hackathon organizers set the stage for the next goal: actually getting employees to adopt the no-code platform. By introducing a no-code platform during a time-boxed event with a goal in mind, hackathons provide a structured balance between experimentation and urgency, and they generate scalable best practices and insights that can be leveraged for future no-code projects. We’ve found that these efforts, and the “learn by doing” culture they promote, increase the likelihood that hackathon participants will continue to use the platform, and that platform adoption will spread to other parts of the workforce. When the person closest to the problem is empowered to do so, an organization can remain future-focused, rather than scrambling to address deficits or petition for limited IT resources.

Hackathons foster collaboration between IT and business users. As mentioned, citizen development is not meant to replace IT so much as to give line-of-business workers more tools to innovate, remove smaller projects from the IT backlog, provide pathways for apps that otherwise might never have been built, and free up developers to focus on high-value strategic initiatives. Additionally, citizen development should not happen behind IT’s back. For example, a strong no-code platform lets employees experiment and build through self-service tools while still giving administrators governance guardrails and visibility into and control over how the databases and APIs behind the no-code platform are being accessed. All of this means that IT and citizen developers are not adversarial, “us versus them” communities but rather symbiotic forces. Hackathons can help establish this relationship from the start, both defining best practices for collaboration between business and IT teams and aligning everyone around the shared benefits of the no-code program.

Executing on the promise of no-code hackathons

Now that you’re acquainted with the benefits and goals of a no-code hackathon, you’re probably wondering, “how do I execute all of this within my specific organization?” We’ll address that question in our next installment--but until then, check out this article to see more of the things people are building, without coding, in AppSheet.

Build your own workout app in 5 steps—without coding

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 18:30:00 +0000

With the holidays behind us and a new year ahead, it’s time to reset our goals and find ways to make our lives healthier and happier. This time last year, like many people, I decided to create a more regimented exercise routine and track my progress. I looked at several fitness and workout apps I could use, but none of them let me track my workouts exactly the way I wanted to—so I made my own, all without writing any code.

If you’ve found yourself in a similar situation, don’t worry: Using AppSheet, Google Cloud’s no-code app development platform, you can also build a custom fitness app that can do things like record your sets, reps and weights, log your workouts and show you how you’re progressing.

To get started, copy the completed version here. If you run into any snags along the way or have questions, we’ve also started a thread on AppSheet’s Community that you can join.

Step 1: Set up your data and create your app

First, you’ll need to organize your data and connect it to AppSheet. AppSheet can connect to a number of data sources, but it’ll be easiest to connect it to Google Sheets, as we’ve built some nifty integrations with Google Workspace. I’ve already set up some sample data. There are two tables (one on each tab): The first has a list of exercises I do each week and the second is a running log of each exercise I do and my results (such as the weight used and my number of reps).

Feel free to copy this Sheet and use it to start your app. Once you’ve done that, you can create your app directly from Google Sheets. Go to Extensions>AppSheet>Create an App and AppSheet will read your data and set up your app. Note that if you’re using another data source, you can follow these steps to connect to AppSheet.

Step 2: Create a form to log your exercises

You should now be in the AppSheet editor. A live preview of your app will be on the right side of your screen. At this point, AppSheet has only connected to one of the two tables we had in our spreadsheet (whichever was open when we created our app), so we’ll want to connect to the other by going to Data>Tables>”Add table for “Workout Log.”

Before creating the form, we need to tell AppSheet what type of data is in each column and how that data should be used. Go to Data>Columns>Workout Log and set the following columns with these settings (you can adjust column settings by clicking on the Pencil icon to the left of each column):

This image shows how I adjusted the settings for “Key,”,“Set 1 Weights (lbs),” “Set 1 Reps,” and “How I Feel.”

Now let’s create a View for this form. A view is similar to a web page, but for apps. Go to UX>Views and click on New View. Set the View name to “Record Exercise”, select “Workout Log” next to For this data, set your View type to “form,” and set the Position as “Left.” Now, if you save your app, you should be able to click on “Record exercise” in your app and it will open up a form where you can log your exercise.

Step 3: Set up your digital workout log book

I like to quickly see past workouts while I’m exercising to know how many reps and weights I should be doing. To make our workout log book, we’ll want to create a new view. Go to UX>View and click on New View. Name this view “Log Book,” select “Workout Log” as your data, select “Table” as the View Type, and set the Position to “Right.”

Then, in the View Options section, choose Sort by “Date,” “Ascending and Group by “Date,” “Ascending.”

Step 4: Create your Stats Dashboard

At this point, we already have a working app that lets us record and review workouts. However, being the data geek I am, I love using graphs and charts to track progress. Essentially, we’ll be making an interactive dashboard with charts that will show stats for whichever exercise we select. This step is a little more involved, so feel free to skip it if you’d like—it is your app after all!

Before we make the Dashboard view, we need to decide what metrics we want to see. I like to see the total number of reps per set, along with the amount of weight I lifted in my first set. We already have a column for weights (Set 1 Weights (lbs)), but we’ll need to set up a virtual column to calculate total reps. To do this, select Data>Columns>Workout Log>Add Virtual Column.

For advanced logic, such as these calculations, AppSheet uses expressions, similar to those used in Google Sheets. Call the Virtual Column “Total Reps” and add this formula in the pop up box to calculate total reps:

[Set 1 reps] + [Set 2 reps] + [Set 3 reps] + [Set 4 reps] + [Set 5 reps]

Now we can work on creating our Dashboard view. In AppSheet, a Dashboard view is basically a view with several other views inside it. So before we create our dashboard, let’s create the following views.

Now we can create our Dashboard view. Let’s call the View “Stats,” set the View type to “Dashboard,” and Position to “Center.” For View Entries, we’ll select “Exercise” (not Exercises!) “Total Reps,” “Set 1 Weight (lbs.),” “Sentiment,” and “Calendar.” Enable Interactive Mode and under Display>Icon type “chart” and select the icon of your choosing. Hit Save, and you should now have a pretty neat dashboard that adjusts each chart based on the exercise you select.

Step 5: Personalize your app and send it to your phone!

Now that your app is ready, you can personalize it by adjusting the look and feel or adding additional functionality. At this point, feel free to poke around the AppSheet editor and test out some of the functionality. For my app, here’s a few of the customizations I added.

I went to UX>Brand and changed my primary color to Blue.
I went to Behavior>Offline/Sync and turned on Offline Use so that I can use my app when I don’t have an internet connection.
I changed the position of my Exercises view to Menu, so it only appears in the Menu in the top-left corner of my app.

Once you’ve adjusted your app the way you want it, feel free to send it to your phone. Go to Users>Users>Share App, type in your email address next to User emails, check “I’m not a robot” and select “Add users + send invite.” Now check your email on your phone and follow the steps to download your app!

AppSheet offers plenty of ways to simplify your life by building apps—see what other apps you can make. Happy app building!

State of no-code app development

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 17:00:00 +0000

It’s no secret that the world is changing faster than ever. Before 2020 became, well, 2020, businesses knew that digital transformation was critical, yet few were prepared to make the pivot.

The events of last year caused a forcing function, accelerating the need for change in organizations around the globe. Problem solving required a democratized approach to the tools of innovation, one in which anyone in the workforce, whether skilled in coding or not, could leverage technology to create novel solutions. The solution stacks businesses were working with needed to be rethought.

Though we typically associate app creation with traditional developers who write code, hundreds of thousands of apps were built this year by non-technical “citizen developer” app creators from around the globe. This democratization occurred because industries such as retail, construction, manufacturing, hospitality, telecom, education, real estate, IT services and more all sought digital transformation through no-code development.

In this post, we’ll breakdown why no-code application development has become an important part of digital transformation by examining the following areas of impact:

Speed and agility
Productivity and collaboration
Governance and security

Speed & agility were critical

In a recent survey of app creators using Google Cloud’s no-code application platform, AppSheet, some 32% of respondents cited speed of development as one of the greatest benefits to using no-code. Faster development times mean more responsive iterations, more problems being solved, and potentially greater impact for those that need tailored line-of-business solutions. The ability to pivot quickly has been incredibly important during a time in which the way we operated frequently needed to change quickly.

How exactly does no-code technology allow for faster development cycles?

First and foremost, it does exactly what the name implies—it allows people to build applications and process automations without coding and therefore opens up innovation to a wider range of employees. AppSheet, for example, abstracts coding into an intuitive, natural-language based interface that anyone can use, even if they have never written a line of code—all while still giving IT the visibility and control it needs to keep data safe.

And while every no-code platform has a different approach to facilitating speedier and more democratic app creation, app creators that choose AppSheet are able to leverage the platform’s use of Google AI and ML in two different ways. Baked-in AI and ML help app creators create prototypes quickly, facilitating things like natural language-interfaces in which users need only type their intent to surface relevant functions, and also enable implementation of rich capabilities like Optical Character Recognition (OCR), for conducting activities such as inventory management or other use cases that involve barcodes, image recognition, and similar ML-driven capabilities.

Collaboration transcends location

The ways in which we work shifted an incredible amount in 2020. Those who generally worked in offices with their teams or in schools with their students were sent home. Those who continued to work on-location filled essential roles that often required agile, on-the-go access to critical data, whether it was stored on-device or in the cloud. As communities surrounding work, school, and family life became impacted and activated in ways we’ve arguably never seen, collaboration and connection became paramount to success in 2020.

This need for collaboration was no different for those trying to find digital ways in which to support the communities in which they operate. For those who use no-code, there were two key ways in which this collaboration takes place. Once an app is shared with another person, whether it be a fellow creator or an end user, collaboration becomes something different. For a creator-to-creator relationship, it means ensuring the data source in use is designed for manageability, iteration, security, and friction-free access. For an end user-to-creator interaction, the relationship is more complex: app creators typically engage with an application in a development capacity on a desktop while end users typically engage with an application on their mobile devices. This is why our approach to no-code lets app creators build one app that’s compatible across them all— desktop, tablet, etc.— with no additional development required to support a range of major operating systems or interaction models. This allows the creator to engage with their end users in a more direct and meaningful manner that not only increases collaboration, but can also increase productivity.

BHI - a construction company based out of the US - is a great example of how to collaborate with a workforce through no-code. With 90% of their employees not only deskless, but also dispersed across worksites spanning 25 states, the company needs the ability to engage with data in real time. They take collaboration one step further by leveraging a combination of no-code development and Google Workspace. This combination has allowed BHI to free up their IT spend by 10% while embracing democratized digital innovation.

Unlocking data without compromising governance and security

Governance was one of 2020’s most discussed IT topics, and for good reason: in 2019, research indicated that “anything from 30% to 50% of enterprise spend is linked to shadow IT.“ When an IT team can set policies and provide oversight for non-technical teams within the organization, employees on the ground can problem solve quickly without creating management and governance liabilities; enterprises want to empower employees to innovate and move fast—but they cannot afford to play fast-and-loose with data security. Neither no-code technology nor the citizen developers who leverage it are meant to replace traditional development practices within an organization. Rather, the intention is to work in concert to support digital transformation by both respecting governance needs and democratizing access to the tools of innovation and optimization.

Belgium-based Solvay is a great example of governance at work. As we detailed in case study, ”Francis Boulu and the [Solvay] industrial team initially started using AppSheet to collect information from production operators to streamline checklists and inspections. Using AppSheet in conjunction with Google Sheets, they were able to rapidly demonstrate and roll out applications and work them into production.” Through word of mouth across the organization, the demand for no-code technology grew, which could easily have overwhelmed any IT team’s backlog. But because Solvay selected a platform that incorporated governance into its capabilities, IT was able to provide an infrastructure that empowered individual contributors to participate in the development process while still adhering to governance requirements. To date, Solvay has created approximately 1,000 apps with no-code that are used around the globe, including those they’ve built in response to support their COVID initiatives.

Looking to the future

As we move past 2020, the primary change in the state of work has been broader recognition of the need to empower non-technical employees to build custom solutions and optimizations. Work culture will continue to shift and the demands for democratizing technology will increase. So too will the demands for platforms such as Google Cloud’s AppSheet. The importance of AI will continue to grow, and as the technological capabilities for these platforms continue to evolve, governance will play a more important role than ever before to ensure those that need to build applications are able.

2021 will bring about new ways to engage with no-code, ways that we believe will help creators deepen their skills and create true impact for their organizations. Analysts agree: Gartner’s October 2019 report “The Future of Apps Must Include Citizen Development,” indicated that by 2023, “the number of active citizen developers at large enterprises will be at least four times the number of professional developers.”

If you’re not already evolving your work to include custom applications with no-code, join app creators around the globe and get started now.

Google Cloud’s no-code year in review

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 20:00:00 +0000

At the start of 2020, Google Cloud set out to reimagine the application development space by acquiring AppSheet, an intelligent no-code application development platform that equips both IT and line-of-business users with the tools they need to quickly build apps and automation without writing any code. In the months that followed, we’ve experienced change, growth and a few surprises along the way. Let’s take a look back at 2020 and examine how AppSheet has helped organizations and individuals across the globe create new ways to work.

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic

In retrospect, the timing of the AppSheet acquisition—which happened right as the pandemic’s impact was becoming better understood—placed Google Cloud in a unique position to support individuals and organizations responding to the crisis. People all around the world, many of whom had no experience writing code, built powerful applications on the AppSheet platform that helped their organizations and communities respond in these uncertain times:

USMEDIC, a provider of comprehensive equipment maintenance solutions to healthcare and medical research communities, built a medical equipment tracking and management solution to support various healthcare organizations, including overrun hospitals struggling to locate equipment.
The Mthunzi Network, a not-for-profit organization that distributes aid to vulnerable populations, built an easy-to-use app to automate the distribution and redemption of digital food vouchers.
The AppSheet Community at large rallied around a particular app that was created for local communities to organize their efforts to support those in need. This single app was built in a matter of days and translated into over 100 languages to make support accessible for anyone who needed it.

It has been humbling and inspiring to witness how no-code app creators have risen to this year’s many challenges. As the issues surrounding the pandemic continue, we are extending AppSheet’s COVID-19 support through June 2021.

Reimagining work

History has demonstrated that innovation is born from necessity. The Guttenberg press, for example, found its notoriety during the plague of the 14th century due to both social and cultural demands. So too has 2020 provided the ultimate forcing function to accelerate digital innovation. It’s forced organizations to reimagine collaboration, productivity, and success, demanding that everyone, not just IT, find new ways to get things done.

For example, Globe Telecom, a leading mobile network provider in the Philippines, adopted AppSheet to accelerate application development. In June, the company announced a no-code hackathon open to all teams, originally planned in 2019 as an in-person event but changed in the wake of the pandemic to an online-only event. Despite the change, organizers were surprised when over 100 teams entered the hackathon, a signal that employees across the organization had an appetite to contribute to the company’s culture of innovation.

The winning team created an app that reports illegal signal boosting. The app captures field data and, if the data shows malfeasance, it triggers automated reports that alert the correct employees to handle the problem, reducing the reporting time from two days to two hours and enabling faster resolution for reported incidents.

We also saw app creators at small businesses and universities build useful no-code solutions with AppSheet. A fifth-generation family business operator created a customer retention app and inventory management app for his jewelry store. An event coordinator built multiple apps to manage registration and logistics for his company’s world-class athletic racing events. A medical student built a flashcard app with a little extra customization and functionality he couldn’t find elsewhere.

Preparing for the future

On our end, we’ve worked tirelessly to improve the platform with nearly 200 releases this year. We’ve made great strides in making AppSheet easier to use for even more users:

The platform’s integrations with Google Workspace, as well as AppSheet’s inclusion in Google Workspace enterprise SKUs, allow people to redefine tasks and processes—and they also add more governance control, boosting AppSheet’s ability to accelerate innovation while avoiding the risks of shadow IT
Easy-to-use app templates help people get started faster and incorporate Google Workspace functionality into their AppSheet-powered apps
Customization features such as Color Picker give app builders more control over their apps
With new connectors, like the Apigee API connector, app creators can link AppSheet to new data sources, opening up a new realm of possibilities

Finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention AppSheet capabilities that we announced in September at Google Cloud Next ‘20 OnAir, such as Apigee datasource for AppSheet, which lets AppSheet users harness Apigee APIs, and AppSheet Automation, which offers a natural language interface and contextual recommendations that let users automate business processes. These efforts, combined with the ongoing integration of Google technologies into AppSheet, give the platform an even better understanding of an app creator’s intent, through a more human-centric approach that makes it easier than ever to build apps without writing any code.

While 2020 has been a challenging year for everyone, we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished. At Google Cloud, we will continue to support the transformative solutions created by citizen developers—people who, because they don’t have traditional coding abilities, may have otherwise not been able to build apps. We look forward to seeing what you build in 2021!

BHI: Embracing Google Workspace and AppSheet to transform the workplace

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 16:00:00 +0000

In the last two decades, BHI, once a small construction company in Vernal, Utah, has expanded its operations to dozens of industries in over 25 states. But while the company grew, its technology trailed behind. File sharing and emails both ran off a single server. Editing a document was a grueling undertaking that required an employee to VPN in, patiently download the file, edit it, then upload it again—all from a job site with limited internet connection. Acknowledging the need for better technology, BHI adopted Google Workspace and AppSheet and transformed its business to be more innovative, productive, and profitable.

Rebuilding collaboration and productivity

BHI first looked to replace its archaic email and file-sharing systems. They found that Google Workspace—as a proven and popular collaboration solution for remote teams and a familiar, preferred platform that most employees use in their personal lives—was the clear choice. BHI migrated its 500 employees to Google Workspace in less than a week. Productivity immediately soared, since employees could collaborate more easily with Google Workspace’s products and access them from any device, from anywhere—even at the construction sites.

For instance, the contract writing process drastically improved with Google Workspace. Version control had always been a struggle—as employees circulated a draft contract from one computer to the next, versions became unruly and randomized, untracked changes popped up, and files went missing. With Google Workspace, the pre-construction, legal, and finance teams can all edit and track changes of a contract from wherever they work. Version control has become a thing of the past, as everyone is always working on the latest version.

By adopting Google Workspace, BHI decentralized its operations and began collaborating in real time across over 150 job sites. Management and IT gained new insights into challenges that they may never have uncovered nor confronted without a cloud-based productivity tool. The IT team also saw an opportunity to overhaul the methods of their deskless workforce, which accounts for 90% of the company. This deskless majority needed to connect directly to the data that influenced, impacted, and comprised their work. They also required more streamlined processes. AppSheet provided the answer to the workforce’s needs, enabling IT to create applications that simplified key tasks so mobile workers could get their jobs done faster and better.

For example, one BHI client required extensive inspections multiple times a day. Before using AppSheet, a BHI inspector would perform the inspection, return to a computer, record the results from paper to a spreadsheet, copy and paste them into a formatted report in a Google Docs, convert the Doc to a PDF, and email the final inspection report to the customer. This manual process took two hours to complete. Now, using AppSheet, the inspector inputs the results on their mobile device while performing the inspection. As soon as the device connects to the internet, it automatically updates the database with the inspector’s inputs, adds the inspection results to a preformatted report built in Google Docs, and emails the final report as a PDF to the customer. With AppSheet, BHI shortened this inspection process from two hours to six minutes, saving over $50,000 a month in labor.

With Google Workspace and AppSheet, BHI has turned into a digital company with real-time data allowing for real-time decisions, collaboration, and transparency in a decentralized environment. Johnny Hacking, Director of IT

An easier software choice for faster results

BHI also found that building apps with AppSheet is much easier than using other solutions, such as developing with low- or full-code tools or purchasing third-party products. Because AppSheet is a true no-code platform, anyone can learn to build and maintain apps. Since adopting AppSheet, the BHI IT team has become so proficient with the platform that they have eliminated the company’s previous backlog of software needs. Now, when a new site opens up, IT proactively works with the site managers to understand its unique requirements in order to build a custom app. Start to finish, scoping and building this site-specific app typically takes less than a week—compared to months with traditional development platforms.

IT team members aren’t the only BHI employees building apps. As Johnny Hacking, BHI’s Director of IT explains, “We have people that aren’t in IT, and when they have an idea we say hey, log into AppSheet, build it out, and then we’ll help out with some final touches on it.”

Empowering employees outside of IT to build AppSheet apps has benefited teams across the company. For example, one team on a solar farm construction project needed to perform inspections of an array of specialized technical equipment with which IT was not familiar. In this case, the solar team, being the subject matter experts, simply built the app according to their specifications. All IT had to do was jump in at the end to help finalize the app—the final product was completely customized to the solar team’s very specific needs. This highlights the benefits of no-code development: on-the-ground experts build and prototype job-specific apps and IT puts the finishing touches on the functionality, all while keeping guardrails in place.

Using Google Workspace and AppSheet also simplifies BHI’s reliance on third-party software. “Our company divisions are so diverse that they each require different software,” says Hacking. “Plus, if we buy a third-party software, we still have to customize it by getting other software, because they don’t play well together. By replacing this software with AppSheet apps, we save a lot of money. And it’s easy to integrate those apps because on the back end, they’re all connected to Google Sheets.”

For the few third-party software products that BHI hasn’t been able to replace, they’ve used Apps Scripts to import the software’s data into Google Sheets, so that their data all lives on one platform. Overall, BHI has been able to free up 10% of its total IT spend by replacing third-party software with Google Workspace and AppSheet apps.

Company culture transformed by technology

“Because we’ve used Google Workspace and AppSheet and it’s been so successful, people are very willing to use them,” Hacking says. “And for a construction company to gain so much trust in these platforms in such a short period of time—that’s huge. Now we’re at the point where employees are asking, ‘What else can we do?’”

Adopting Google Workspace and AppSheet has not only made BHI more productive, but also transformed the company culture. Employees feel empowered to be more innovative and are constantly seeking ways to improve. Simplifying employees’ work has led to a direct boost in morale.

The role of IT has also transformed. As Hacking explains, “In just three years of using these technologies, IT has gone from being support overhead to being proactively brought to the table to take part in the business strategy.” Increased IT visibility and culpability has helped solve business problems and led to increased profitability.

BHI continues to find new ways to leverage Google Workspace and AppSheet to improve business. In response to COVID, they created a timesheet app that allows employees to clock in without touching a device. Most meetings are now held virtually using Google Meet. Fleet maintenance and repairs are all managed with apps. And, of course, the company has better data and insights than ever. As Hacking puts it, “We’re continuing to stay on the cusp of innovation because of Google Workspace and AppSheet.”

Learn more about Google Workspace and AppSheet.

Faster, more powerful apps for everyone: What happened at Next OnAir this week

Fri, 11 Sep 2020 16:00:00 +0000

Week nine of Google Cloud Next ‘20: OnAir is in the books—and what a week it was! From Google Cloud GM/VP Amit Zavery’s keynote to product announcements to customer demos to Google SVP Urs Hölzle presentation and Q&A, we explored multiple ways enterprises are leveraging APIs and no-code application development to accelerate their digital transformations. There was a lot to absorb, so let’s take a look back.

Key announcements from the week

We introduced our investment in the category of business application platform, which makes it easier for enterprises to create and extend applications, build and automate business processes, and connect and modernize legacy applications.

Leveraging not only Apigee API management and AppSheet no-code development but also Google Cloud’s machine learning capabilities, our business application platform both helps traditional IT to do more with APIs and empowers line-of-business employees to create apps and automation without having to write code. All of this of course comes with robust governance tools and security protections. We can’t wait to see what the business application platform helps you to build.

We also announced the beta release of API Gateway, a fully-managed service that lets developers build, secure, and monitor APIs for Google Cloud workloads and serverless backends. Serverless APIs are becoming more popular, and this solution will help developers to begin sharing their APIs with collaborators without having to worry about infrastructure considerations.

AppSheet, our no-code solution, also unveiled two new capabilities to enable non-technical workers to create even more powerful apps and business process optimizations, all in the same unified platform. Apigee datasource for AppSheet lets AppSheet users harness Apigee APIs. This not only opens up practically infinite new data sources for no-code apps but should also help enterprises address backlogs for line-of-business apps. AppSheet Automation offers a natural language interface and contextual recommendations that let users automate business processes, capabilities that will help enterprises reduce time-consuming and error-prone manual processes.

We’re excited for these new products to help our customers, and as Amit noted during his keynote, we have much more in the works. Over the next 12 months, we’ll be doubling down on supporting multi-cloud and hybrid deployment models and further integrating ML capabilities. Enhancements to support continually-evolving DevOps needs are planned, such as increased support for serverless workloads, and security and compliance improvements are of course in the works too. Above all, we’ll be focused on helping customers to more easily build applications, manage digital assets, drive efficiency, and extract insights from data.

Demos to accelerate digital transformation

Much of week nine focused on making application development easier and faster, both for traditional developers and the new breed of no-code citizen developers—and there’s nothing like a demo to help visualize what we mean by “easier and faster.”

We launched several demos this week, including:

No-Code App Development with AppSheet, which explores how AppSheet lets employees build mobile and desktop apps without having to write any code
Open Banking, Powered by Apigee API Management, which investigates how externalized APIs can fuel digital transformation, with a particular focus on the banking industry
Apigee: Full-lifecycle API Management, which overviews the ins and outs of API management
Market Data in the Cloud, which shares how CME Group uses real-time data and Google Cloud's analytical tools to support trading operations in futures markets

Best practices from Google Cloud customers

One of the most valuable parts of any conference is hearing best practices from peer companies who’ve battle-tested products and strategies in the field. Week 9 featured a wide range of Google Cloud customers who shared a wealth of information for navigating digital transformation, including:

HP Inc. discussed their focus on developer experiences, which included the creation of a definitive catalog of APIs for both internal and external developer communities
T-Mobile joined us for two sessions: in one, they explored how APIs can be infused with AI and ML technologies and performed a demo to overview API management best practices; and in the other, they explained how API management and a service mesh work together in modern cloud-native architectures
Gap revealed how it achieved exponential growth in API adoption through a self-service, low-friction developer portal
Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) detailed their API-driven open data hub for the energy space
Pizza Hut shared how it has used APIs to modernize its platform
BHI discussed how it used AppSheet and other Google Cloud products to completely overhaul its document-sharing and collaboration infrastructure, and to empower line-of-business workers to build no-code apps for tasks like construction site inspections

What’s next

Week 9 concludes Google Cloud Next ‘20: OnAir. We’ve covered a lot of ground, from infrastructure, security, and databases to machine learning, collaboration, and APIs—and we can’t wait to see how you put it all into practice. And for our customers in Europe, Middle East, and Africa, we’re kicking off Google Cloud Next OnAir EMEA on Sep 29 with more than 30 new sessions over 5 weeks specially tailored to the region—learn more on our website.

Thank you to everyone who joined us, both this week and over the last two months. And if you missed any sessions, or just can't get enough and want to review, be sure to check out the Next OnAir sessions page, where you can access all the recordings.

No-code momentum: Accelerating app development and automation

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 16:00:00 +0000

When AppSheet became part of the Google Cloud family earlier this year, it was an investment in the potential for no-code development to accelerate digital transformation. Extending the ability to create apps and automate business processes from traditional IT to non-technical workers can be transformative. It both empowers those closest to challenges to create solutions and frees up IT to work on strategic initiatives instead of the backlog of line of business apps. We couldn’t wait to see what our customers would build, and they’ve built even more apps than we imagined.

BHI, a turnkey construction company general contractor that serves the civil, pipeline, communications, electrical, and renewable energy industries, used G Suite and AppSheet to completely overhaul its file sharing and collaboration workflows. AppSheet not only helped BHI’s IT team to more quickly complete backlogged projects but also empowered non-technical employees to create their own solutions, such as an app a team on a solar farm construction project built to inspect specialized equipment.

When someone outside IT has a great idea, “we say, log into AppSheet, build it out, and then we’ll help out with some final touches on it,” said Johnny Hacking, BHI’s Director of IT.

Globe Telecom, a leading mobile network provider in the Philippines, recently adopted AppSheet to accelerate application development and explore new innovation opportunities. In their first hackathon, over 107 teams applied to participate, far more than the 30 or so organizers expected. The winning app helped expedite workflows by facilitating data-capture and automated reporting for illegal signal booster discovery. Other finalist apps included inventory management apps for Globe’s retail outlets, development planning and evaluation apps to help the workforce align on and manage goals in real-time, and even a vehicle maintenance app that includes gas price reporting.

And these are just a few examples. The ways businesses are harnessing no-code development to solve problems both large and small multiplies by the day.

We’re excited to help these use cases proliferate even faster. This week, we spoke about how we are investing in the category of business application platform. Google Cloud’s business application platform includes AppSheet and gives enterprises the tools to create and extend applications, build and automate business processes, and connect and modernize applications—all with an emphasis on not only traditional developers but also citizen developers.

Over the last few months, we’ve increasingly integrated Google’s machine learning technology into the platform, enabling users to do things like automate business processes via natural language inputs. Google’s machine learning has always been the basis of AppSheet’s intelligence features, but we’ve further integrated Google technologies to give AppSheet an even greater understanding of an app creator’s intent, enabling the platform to accelerate development by offering “human-friendly” suggestions and checks.

Google technologies have also improved natural language support in search, predictive features, optical character recognition analysis, and much more. Whereas building machine learning into an app would have been prohibitively daunting just a few years ago, AppSheet lets anyone do it in as little as a few hours.

We've developed an exciting roadmap to make app-building even more intuitive, with planned feature enhancements including automatic detections of sensitive data and refined automation recommendations.

Access to data and apps, wherever they reside, is another area we’re focused on. The recently-announced Apigee data source for AppSheet will take that access to a new level, bringing together API management with no-code development. Citizen developers will now be able to leverage APIs to build no-code applications, which gives app developers even more tools to build powerful apps, further accelerates app development, and helps eliminate information silos.

We’re also investing heavily in making it easier to automate business processes. Our recent announcement of AppSheet Automation is one step in this effort, with an intent-driven authoring experience, powered by Google AI, along with comprehensive governance for centralized enforcement and monitoring of internal policies. Business developers can use this solution to easily connect to a number of data sources (such as Salesforce, MySQL, and G Suite) and quickly model automated business processes.

The need for speed is paramount in today’s fluid, ever-changing business conditions, and we’re excited to see how customers use these new features and capabilities to accelerate their digital transformations. We have much more planned for our business application platform and invite you to join the no-code movement as it continues to gain momentum.

Visit our site to learn more about no-code development on Google Cloud.

Help boost productivity with G Suite and AppSheet app templates

Wed, 09 Sep 2020 16:00:00 +0000

G Suite users already have a rich suite of tools at their fingertips that allow them to collaborate and solve complex challenges. AppSheet’s new templates extend these capabilities further into no-code development of line-of-business apps, helping more people use G Suite in more ways to get work done.

For example, suppose a team using G Suite was tasked with performing regular inspections of several facilities to ensure safety standards were being followed. Leveraging AppSheet and one of our new templates, this team could build an inspection app in a matter of days and customize it to their specific needs, without writing a line of code. From this one app, they’d be able to submit inspection forms that save to a Google Sheet, track and resolve issues, view and schedule Calendar events, and join a daily standup with their team on Meet.

The ability to create a line-of-business app without eating aggressively into IT resources is especially useful for mobile workers. With custom apps built in AppSheet and connected via user-friendly templates to G Suite, these workers can have reliable access to the information and actions they need, whether that means updating records, scheduling appointments, collaborating, or emailing reports.

G Suite and AppSheet in Action: Inside BHI’s Digital Transformation

A turnkey construction company general contractor that serves the civil, pipeline, communications, electrical, and renewable energy industries, BHI is an excellent example of what G Suite together with AppSheet can help businesses achieve.

In the last two decades, BHI grew from a small business based in Utah to one that includes hundreds of employees and operations in over 25 states. Its technology infrastructure didn’t keep up with the rapid growth, however, and the company found itself wasting time and resources on manual processes.

File sharing and email relied on a single server, for example, so to update a shared file, employees had to use a VPN to log in, download the file, edit it, then upload it again. BHI was attracted to G Suite in part because this kind of version control nightmare doesn’t exist; the most-up-to-date document is available in the cloud to all collaborators on any device. The company needed under a week to migrate 90% of its 500 employees, and since then, productivity has since soared.

Meanwhile, by letting employees write line-of-business apps without coding, AppSheet both helped BHI’s IT team to more quickly complete many backlogged projects, and empowered non-technical BHI employees to create solutions themselves.

According to Johnny Hacking, BHI’s Director of IT, when someone outside IT has a great idea, “we say, log into AppSheet, build it out, and then we’ll help out with some final touches on it.”

While not all AppSheet and G Suite use cases overlap, BHI has found that projects that combine the two platforms can be particularly powerful. For example, one solution allowed BHI to shorten a two hour inspection process down to six minutes, saving over $50,000 per month in labor. Originally, this process required the inspector to manually record information in the field, upload it to a computer, then format and send a report to the customer. The combination of G Suite’s file management and collaboration tools and AppSheet’s no-code interface led to an app that lets the inspector simply input results on their mobile device. Then as soon as the device connects to the internet, it automatically uploads the data to a Google Sheet and emails the report to the client, based on a preformatted template in Docs.

"With G Suite and AppSheet, BHI has turned into a digital company with real-time data allowing for real-time decisions, collaboration, and transparency in a decentralized environment,” said Hacking.

With our new templates, use cases such as BHI’s become easier to execute by making it even simpler to combine the power of G Suite and AppSheet. We see the rise of citizen developers and no-code applications as a significant force in digital transformation, and we can’t wait to see what our customers use these templates to create. You can access our templates here.

To learn more about BHI and how they’ve leveraged these platforms to empower their mobile workforce, watch our NEXT OnAir session, Digitize your Deskless Workforce Without Coding, Using AppSheet.

Accelerate digital transformation with business application platform

Tue, 08 Sep 2020 12:00:00 +0000

2020 has been among the most disruptive years business leaders have ever confronted, with many enterprises absorbing several years of digital transformation over just a few months. These ongoing efforts have not been easy, with numerous organizations finding their existing resources and workflows won’t scale and don’t allow them to move quickly or responsively enough. They need to rethink how transformation occurs and how different parts of the workforce can participate.

To help businesses navigate this journey, build resilience, and accelerate innovation, we’re excited to introduce the category of Business Application Platform. Encompassing API management, no-code application development, automation and data insights capabilities, the Business Application Platform aims to:

Provide a consistent way of consuming services, data, and functionality, via APIs, despite complex backends
Empower non-technical employees to quickly build data-driven applications without coding
Simplify integration and extension of applications and the automation of business processes
Arm users with the ability to extract insights from data via self-service tools, like Looker

The Business Application Platform builds on Google Cloud’s investments in Apigee API management and AppSheet no-code application development. We’ll be adding new features in these areas that leverage Google Cloud’s expertise in hybrid and multi cloud architectures, artificial intelligence and machine learning, lifecycle management, security, and productivity and collaboration.

We’re starting this process today by introducing several new products and features to empower enterprises to quickly build applications, automate workflows, and derive insights:

The beta release of API Gateway, a fully-managed offering that lets developers build, secure, and monitor APIs for Google Cloud workloads and serverless backends.

General availability of Apigee data source for AppSheet, which lets AppSheet users harness Apigee APIs to build apps without coding
The early access release of AppSheet Automation, a solution that empowers non-technical users to automate processes at scale by leveraging various data sources

Managing Serverless APIs with API Gateway

Serverless workloads are becoming more popular with developers, who are increasingly packaging their serverless applications as APIs, both to share them with other teams and to expose them publicly over the web. API Gateway lets developers secure and manage their APIs built on Compute Engine, GKE, App Engine, and serverless backends (Cloud Functions and Cloud Run), all without having to write code for different endpoints or worry about any of the infrastructure configuration or scaling.

Built on Envoy, API Gateway offers high-performance and scalability, with features that include authentication, key validation, and rate limiting. Now available in beta, this service uses consumption-based and tiered pricing for cost flexibility. Many of our early adopters have been enthusiastic, and we are excited to expand API Gateway to more users and help more developers build great apps. Click here to start using API Gateway in beta.

“We are using Google Cloud’s API Gateway to manage the APIs for our serverless applications running on Cloud Run, Cloud Functions and App Engine. The ease of set up and built-in security features make it a great fit for our applications,” said Guillaume Blaquiere, Lead Developer at Veolia.

Building richer no-code apps with new Apigee data source for AppSheet

No-code application development continues to gain momentum. In their October 2019 report titled “The future of apps must include citizen development ,” Gartner predicts, “By 2023, the number of active citizen developers at large enterprises will be at least four times the number of professional developers.”

AppSheet already supports a variety of data sources, such as G Suite, mySQL, and Salesforce. Now, with general availability of Apigee data source for Appsheet, enterprises can make even more data available to citizen developers in their workforce. By enabling employees to build apps that leverage Apigee APIs and require no coding, enterprises can both empower line-of-business employees without technical experience to create innovative apps and reduce traditional IT backlog. To learn more about the Apigee data source for AppSheet, click here.

“We have been building apps with AppSheet by using CRM-related data, Google Sheets, and a number of other sources.” said Matthew Brown, Principal Data Architect at EBSCO. “Apigee data source for AppSheet should considerably increase our productivity and speed by making it easier to access existing data via APIs when building applications.”

Automating manual processes faster with AppSheet Automation

When business processes rely on manual actions, valuable time is often wasted updating systems instead of focusing on work that drives the enterprise forward. Moreover, opportunities for mistakes or communication lapses are abundant. Line-of-business workers are closest to these challenges, so empowering them to optimize and automate processes is an important area of enterprise innovation.

Powered by Google Cloud’s AI products and now available for early access, AppSheet Automation serves this need by helping businesses build and run automations faster, without having to write code. It is easily governed, ensuring data security across the entire organization, and can address a vast array of use cases, including human-centric processes, application integration, and document-based processes. Built around an intuitive interface that provides contextual suggestions based on natural language inputs, AppSheet Automation brings together the power of AI and no-code, letting users build both rich apps and powerful automations within the same unified platform. Click here to sign up for early access to AppSheet Automation.

“AppSheet enables our team to build rich applications without coding.” said Raghudeep Madineni, Sr. Manager, Digital and IIOT at Ather Energy. “With the upcoming launch of AppSheet Automation, it will offer a unified solution for no-code application development and automation, effectively increasing the productivity of our developers and reducing the time required to get to market.”

Moving faster with the Business Application Platform

With these new releases, Google Cloud is focused on enabling enterprises to take innovation beyond the realms of IT and accelerate digital transformation. We are confident the new category of business application platforms will help empower both technical and line of business developers with the core ability to create and extend applications, build and automate workflows, and connect and modernize applications—we can’t wait to see what you build.

To learn more, visit Business Application Platform

Google acquires AppSheet to help businesses create and extend applications—without coding

Tue, 14 Jan 2020 18:30:00 +0000

Today, Google is excited to announce that it has acquired AppSheet, a leading no-code application development platform used by a number of enterprises across a variety of industries.

The demand for faster processes and automation in today’s competitive landscape requires more business applications to be built with greater speed and efficiency. However, many companies lack the resources to address these challenges. This acquisition helps enterprises empower millions of citizen developers to more easily create and extend applications without the need for professional coding skills.

According to “The Forrester Wave™: Low-Code Platforms For Business Developers,” Q2 2019, “AppSheet has the most aggressive strategy and roadmap for empowering business people as developers. The platform had the highest score possible in the commercial model criterion and it shows in a stellar experience along with strong features for mobile app development, data design, application scaling, and documentation generation.”

AppSheet complements Google Cloud’s strategy to reimagine the application development space with a platform that helps enterprises innovate with no-code development, workflow automation, application integration and API management as they modernize their business processes in the cloud. AppSheet’s ability to power a range of applications—from CRM to field inspections and personalized reporting—combined with Google Cloud’s deep expertise in key verticals, will further enable digital transformation across industries like financial services, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, communication and media & entertainment.

With this acquisition, customers will be able to develop richer applications at scale that leverage not only Google Sheets and Forms which are already popular with customers, but other top Google technologies like Android, Maps and Google Analytics. In addition, AppSheet customers can continue to integrate with a number of cloud-hosted data sources including Salesforce, Dropbox, AWS DynamoDB and MySQL.

For more information, you can read AppSheet CEO, Praveen Seshadri’s blog post. We look forward to sharing more with you soon!

No-code Development

Introducing easier de-identification of Cloud Storage data

De-identification of Cloud Storage just got easier

The “De-identify findings” Action

What can automatic De-identification do?

New Dictionary Replace method

Next Steps:

Cloud Data Loss Prevention (Cloud DLP) Overview

Forrester names Google AppSheet a Leader in low-code platforms for business developers!

Bring no-code apps to your Gmail inbox. Here’s how.

How AppSheet in Gmail works

Create your first dynamic email in AppSheet

Empowering non-profit New Incentives with no-code

Remote, hybrid, or office work? It's easier with no-code apps

Simplify and centralize with apps

Streamline with automations

Optimize for multiple roles

Mission critical solutions, faster than ever

4 simple steps to make the perfect spreadsheet to power your no-code app

Step 1: Use clean table layouts

Step 2: Name and format your data simply and consistently

Step 3: Use columns for categories and rows for entries

Step 4: Add a key column

It’s time to create your first no-code app

Reclaim time and talent with AppSheet Automation

How to automate with AppSheet Automation

Step 1: Creating a bot

Step 2: Configuring the event and process

Step 3: See your bot in action

Reclaim time and talent with AppSheet Automation

Part 2: Hackathons aren’t just for programmers anymore

Three questions to refine your goals for a hackathon

Four key steps for planning a successful no-code hackathon

Keep the momentum going!

Part 1: Hackathons aren’t just for programmers anymore

What no-code automation looks like with AppSheet

AppSheet Automation reclaims developer time

Automation of course!

Intelligent document processing

Intent-aware

Integration with external data sources

How to get started

Sample apps

Videos

Online community

Reclaim time and talent with AppSheet Automation

AppSheet Automation eliminates busywork

Growing adoption of AppSheet Automation

Improving workforce collaboration with AppSheet Automation

Part 1: Hackathons aren’t just for programmers anymore

How no-code hackathons drive value

Executing on the promise of no-code hackathons

Build your own workout app in 5 steps—without coding

Step 1: Set up your data and create your app

Step 2: Create a form to log your exercises

Step 3: Set up your digital workout log book

Step 4: Create your Stats Dashboard

Step 5: Personalize your app and send it to your phone!

State of no-code app development

Speed & agility were critical

Collaboration transcends location

Unlocking data without compromising governance and security

Looking to the future

Google Cloud’s no-code year in review

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic

Reimagining work

Preparing for the future

BHI: Embracing Google Workspace and AppSheet to transform the workplace

Introducing Google Workspace

Faster, more powerful apps for everyone: What happened at Next OnAir this week

Key announcements from the week

Demos to accelerate digital transformation

Best practices from Google Cloud customers

What’s next

No-code momentum: Accelerating app development and automation

Help boost productivity with G Suite and AppSheet app templates

Help boost productivity with G Suite and AppSheet app templates

G Suite and AppSheet in Action: Inside BHI’s Digital Transformation

No-code momentum: Accelerating app development and automation

Accelerate digital transformation with business application platform