Google Extends Google Apps Script to Standard Edition Users

By Chelsi Nakano (@chelkano) Feb 5, 2010

If you’ve been waiting to get your hands on Google Apps Script, now you can. Previously only available in Education and Premiere Editions, Google recently opened up the functionality to Standard users.

Go-Go-Gadget Google!

With the scripts users can automate a variety of features in Google Apps, such as reading and changing values in Google Spreadsheets, checking stock prices, creating Google Calendar appointments, and sending e-mail.

Here's a brief intro:

Like we said last year when the functionality was made available to the enterprise, it essentially makes a bunch of stuff easier to execute. Here are the general frills:

Interaction with different Google Products and capabilities using JavaScript APIs
Execution and hosting of scripts on the Google cloud
Basic support for event handling that can run even when users are offline
deployment and maintenance
Standard methods of security using OAuth: users or domain administrators have to grant each script access to the data it needs to run

Google makes it easy to get started by providing access to an online Script Editor in Google Spreadsheets:

Google Script menu

"Scripts consist of JavaScript variables, functions and classes," notes Google. "Any function can be invoked directly from the Script Editor, except those with a name that ends with an underscore, which can only be called from other functions. Functions will not be able to change any state in the execution environment, although you can simulate that behavior by modifying spreadsheets cells."

Check out the entire overview here, or some helpful tutorials.