Category: Session Class

How to force subscribe a user in your domain to a Google Calendar with Google Apps Script.

If you have tried to seamlessly subscribe a user to a Google Calendar as part of an automation workflow in Google Apps Script and discovered that all that happens is that the user gets an automated email request to join, and then it is up to them to accept the calendar invitation to add it to their live calendar list, you’re in the right place.

While providing an invitation gateway makes a lot of sense for Google Workspace consumer(free) accounts where you don’t want strangers to subscribe you to calendars that you don’t want to be a member of, it can be a little frustrating for Google Workspace business and organisations that need users to see a particular calendar.

You’ve probably experienced this, but you can’t always rely on your users to accept these invitations to add a calendar. Then down the track, the user is left scratching their head wondering why they are not getting the calendar events like everyone else.

Continue reading “How to force subscribe a user in your domain to a Google Calendar with Google Apps Script.”

Google Apps Script: Store a Unique User Key from a User Accessing your WebApp [updated Dec 2021]

Google Apps Script: WebApp [updated Dec 2021 – With thanks to Greg S]

In this tutorial, we will cover how you can get a unique temporary access key from a user accessing your WebApp that lasts for 30 days.

Temporary access keys allow you to track users as they use your WebApp over time while still providing anonymity to the user by providing only an access key to that user. Rather than, say, use their name or email address.

Why is this important? Well, you might want to limit the number of times a user submits a form on your WebApp. If you can get a user’s access key unique to them then you can store the number of attempts by the user and check it before the data is submitted.

For example, in a previous post, we created a chain story that we might want to limit the number of times our users contribute to our story to once a day.

NOTE! This tutorial is pretty much standalone. However, it will require some basic knowledge of Google Apps Script WebApp and HTML. Don’t worry if some basic setup parts are not covered in this tutorial, I’ll link to how to do these bits if you need some more instruction.

Let’s take a look at what we are going to make:

Continue reading “Google Apps Script: Store a Unique User Key from a User Accessing your WebApp [updated Dec 2021]”