Are you ready to move beyond presentations and dive into building? At the Google Workspace Developer Summit, we believe the most impactful learning comes from doing. That’s why Day 1 of the summit is dedicated to the Google Workspace Development Crash Course — a unique, challenge-based experience where you and your team will build a real, end-to-end solution.
This isn’t a passive coding tutorial. We’ll provide a high-level goal, but the journey to achieve it is yours to explore. Working collaboratively in teams, you’ll be encouraged to think critically, search for solutions, and discover the best approaches with minimal instruction. This approach emphasizes active learning and best practices , fostering genuine skill development. While expert coaches will be on hand to offer guidance, the power of discovery will truly come from your own efforts.
Your Journey Through the Build
This immersive workshop will guide you through a series of practical, interconnected challenges, pushing your skills in new directions.
First , you’ll master the art of Google Sheets Automation and Google Calendar Integration. Using Apps Script, you’ll go beyond basic formulas to create custom functions and programmatically update data. You’ll then learn to automatically create calendar events, laying the groundwork for a more powerful application.
- For example, you could build an automated project management tool : an Apps Script that reads project deadlines and team members from a Google Sheet and automatically populates a shared team calendar with project milestones.
Next , you’ll break out of the Google Workspace bubble. We’ll show you how to connect your project to the outside world by using UrlFetchApp to interact with external APIs, such as a weather service. You’ll then build a simple Google Workspace add-on with interactive elements, bringing all of this functionality directly into your users’ workflow.
- For example, you could build a contextual sales dashboard add-on : an add-on for Google Sheets that, with a single button click, fetches real-time weather data for a client’s location from an external API and displays it alongside sales forecasts, providing richer context for business decisions.
The AI-Powered Grand Finale
The workshop’s biggest challenge awaits: integrating cutting-edge AI into your add-on. We’ll show you how to leverage AI directly within Apps Script, empowering you to create smarter, more intuitive solutions.
You’ll experiment with AI Studio to get quick, powerful prompt responses. For more advanced scenarios, we’ll explore using Vertex AI with a service account , giving you a taste of enterprise-grade AI integration.
Your final task: building a full add-on where a user can input a prompt and receive an AI-generated response, all within the add-on itself.
For example, you could build an AI summarization tool : an add-on that summarizes long email threads or documents stored in Google Drive with a single click, saving you hours of reading time.
Another option is an AI-powered meeting assistant : a tool that takes a few bullet points as input and uses AI to generate comprehensive, well-structured meeting notes or follow-up emails.
Finally , you’ll learn how to take your project to the next level by rewriting your add-on to use HTTP endpoints and deploying it to Cloud Functions. This final step will introduce you to the benefits of cloud databases and show you what it takes to build a truly scalable application.
Come with intermediate coding skills and an appetite for a challenge. This workshop is your chance to stop watching and start building the future of work.
Ready to start building?
Sign up for the Google Workspace Developer Summit today!
Session content is subject to change.
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