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Posted by Claudio Cherubino, Google Apps APIs Team

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• code snippets and samples
• reviews of customer integration and deployment cases
• interviews with developers on best practices for developing in Apps
• voting on most-requested developer extensions in Apps
• discussion of OAuth roadmap
• references to OpenID
• smart ways to do logging (and analysis/reporting) in AppEngine, etc.
• Storing JSON in AppEngine

Editors note: This has been cross-posted with the Google Analytics blog and the Google Developers blog -- Jan Kleinert

Many people have been asking for a simple way to put Google Analytics data into a Google Spreadsheet. Once the data is inside a Google Spreadsheet, users can easily manipulate Google Analytics data, create new visualizations, and build internal dashboards.

So today we released a new integration that dramatically reduces the work required to put Google Analytics data into any Apps Script supported product, such as Google Docs, Sites, or Spreadsheets.

Here’s an example of Google Analytics data accessed through Apps Script and displayed in a Google Spreadsheet.

Custom API Dashboards - No Code Required

We know that a popular use case of this integration will be to create dashboards that automatically update. To make this easy to do, we’ve added a script to the Spreadsheets script gallery that handles all this work - no code required. The script is called Google Analytics Report Automation (Magic).

This script is a great template for starting your own project, and we’ve had many internal Google teams save hours of time using this tool. Here’s a video demoing how to build a dashboard using this script:

You can find this script by opening or creating a Google Spreadsheet, clicking Tools -> Script Gallery and searching for “analytics magic”.

Writing Your Own Script

Of course many developers will want to write their own code. With the new Analytics – Apps Script integration, you can request the total visitors, visits, and pageviews over time and put this data into a spreadsheet with just the following code:

// Get Data.
var results = Analytics.Data.Ga.get(
    tableId,
    startDate,
    endDate,
    ga:visitors,ga:visits,ga:pageviews,
    {‘dimensions’: ‘ga:date’});

// Output to spreadsheet.
var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().insertSheet();
sheet.getRange(2, 1, results.getRows().length, headerNames.length)
    .setValues(results.getRows());

// Make Sandwich.

To get started now, read our Automated Access to Google Analytics Data in Google Spreadsheets tutorial. Also check out the Google Analytics Apps Script reference docs.

Solving Business Problems

Are you ready to start building solutions using Google Analytics and Google Apps Script?

We’d love to hear new ways you use this integration to help manipulate, visualize and present data to solve business problems. To encourage you to try out this integration, we are giving out Google Analytics developer t-shirts to the first 15 developers to build a solution using both APIs.

To be eligible, you must publish your solution to either the Chrome Web Store or the Spreadsheets Script Gallery and include a description of a business problem the script solves. We’ll then collect these scripts and highlight the solutions in an upcoming blog post. After you publish your script, fill out this form to share what you’ve built.

We’re looking forward to seeing what you can do with this integration.

Nick Mihailovski   profile Nick is a Senior Developer Programs Engineer working on the Google Analytics API. In his spare time he likes to travel around the world.

It’s time for the 2012 General Election in the United States and along with it comes the tedious process of finding your voter registration, polling sites, times, directions, etc. The previously announced Google Civic Information API provides a great service to programmatically obtain much of this information based on the your home address. Google Apps Script makes it really quick and easy to build a web application that queries this information and uses various Google services to organize and track your information.

Election Info is a sample application built using Apps Script that can:

• Query the Google Civic Information API to find polling locations and hours using client side JavaScript and AJAX.
• Display polling information using HtmlService with jQuery for a clean effective UI.
• Generate static maps via UrlFetch and the MapsService to show polling maps and directions.
• Create a calendar event for election day with your polling location using the Calendar service.
• Generate a bring-along document with poll directions and hours using the Document service.
• Send you an email with a summary with your polling place information using the Gmail service.
• Store your previous searches in UserProperties so it will remember your likely home address the next time you launch the app.

As you can see, this is a comprehensive sample app that is useful while also highlighting key Apps Script capabilities.

Install the app from the Chrome Web Store. Check back soon as we will be writing a blog post with details and sample code on how the sample was built.

Arun Nagarajan   profile | twitter Arun is a Developer Advocate on Google Apps Script. Arun works closely with the community of partners, customers and developers to help them build compelling applications on top of Google Apps using Apps Script. In the past, he spent over 9 years building and designing platforms and infrastructure for enterprise mobile applications.. Arun is originally from the Boston area and enjoys basketball and snowboarding.

The Challenge

1. Are our customers asking for it?
2. Will it give us access to a significantly larger lead flow?
3. Do the people that use these apps typically pay for them?
4. Would our target customer expect to find our type of tool there?
5. What does the competition look like on each platform?
6. What is the scope of the development effort?

Decision Time

The Details

1. Universal Navigation and Single Sign-on
2. Move Data to and from Google Spreadsheets
3. Attach Google Docs to Any Row
4. Open any attached file as a Google Doc
5. Synchronize Contacts
6. Display & Manage dates between Sheets & Calendars
7. Share individual parts of the sheet via Gmail

We divided the development into two phases based largely on the availability of the specific Google Apps APIs. Mail and Calendar were phase 2, everything else was phase 1. We had a single, mostly dedicated developer for the effort.

Stage 1

We first implemented single-sign-on via OpenID and Google Docs API integration using OAuth for standard Google Accounts. This included data import/export, attaching Google Docs to rows, uploading office documents to Google Docs, and importing Contacts. We then extended this integration to support Google Apps users. These features were rolled out in Q3 of 2009, well in advance of the Google Apps Marketplace launch. It took a senior developer roughly 6 weeks to implement this first stage. With the core integration features completed, we were able to quickly implement new Apps Marketplace functionality, including Universal Navigation and the Licensing API, as they were made available in the sandbox.

Stage 2

We are developing full-featured Google Calendar integration, utilizing both the Google Calendar Data API and Calendar Event Gadgets, to be delivered in May 2010. Gmail integration will follow quickly, utilizing both the OAuth access to IMAP and SMTP and Gmail Contextual Gadgets. With the experience we have integrating other APIs, the development of these features is greatly simplified, as the infrastructure – implementation of OpenID, OAuth, and the GData Java Client Library – is already in place.

The Mechanics

We chose to enter three variations of Smartsheet into the Google Apps Marketplace: two mainstream solutions and one emerging technology solution.

Mainstream:

1. Smartsheet Sales Pipeline for Google Apps
2. Smartsheet Project Management for Google Apps

Emerging Technology:

1. Smartsheet Crowdsourcing for Google Apps

The decision to start with the Project Management and Sales Pipeline applications was based on the belief that they would have the broadest appeal to two Google Apps customer types: Small Businesses and Large Scale Education customers.

We included Smartsheet Crowdsourcing as a test of an entirely unique product that pushes an emerging trend.

The Results

Google Apps Marketplace has performed very well across several of Smartsheets key performance indicators.

Strong Leads - the percentage of signups that accrue a statistically significant quantity of behavioral actions within the application. A strong lead is highly correlated with an eventual paying customer.
Convert to Paid - the percentage of total leads that eventually become paying customers.
Average MRR - Monthly Recurring Revenue is the average monthly spend of the leads that become paying customers.


The statistics are fantastic, and have improved the profitability of our customer acquisition programs significantly. Today, we get "free" leads generated by SEO, PR and buzz (Non-Paid). These are the Holy Grail source of profitable customers. We add $2,160 a month in recurring revenue for every 1,000 leads that come in via non-paid channels. At $1,740 a month per 1,000 leads, Google Apps Marketplace is also a very profitable channel that brings up the overall averages (subtract the 20% Google is planning to charge for Apps customers).

None of the statistics above matter without lead volume to power them. Thats where the Google Apps Marketplace really makes these numbers sing. Weve seen a very meaningful increase in high quality, non-paid lead flow directly attributable to Google Apps customers.

Our customers cite Smartsheets tight integration with Googles Data APIs as a key factor in their decision to purchase. A common theme emerging in the feedback is reflected in this comment from a manufacturing company president: "Smartsheet is making the Docs component of Google Apps more useful to our team."

Moving Forward

Customer requests for features and enhancements to our Apps integration have already started pouring in. They are great guideposts toward attracting a larger percentage of these great Apps users.

The Google Apps Marketplace is a rich source of customers, so staying above the noise as it attracts more ISVs will be a priority. Were confident we can continue refining our product and services to deliver a superior solution. And, well count on the Google team to value customer success and application utility as primary criteria for rating and ranking the vendor directories.

By Brent Frei, Smartsheet