Tag Archives: Google Forms

Create quizzes in Google Forms with Apps Script

Posted by Tynia Yang, Software Engineer, Google Forms

Last year, we launched Quizzes in Google Forms to help teachers and students take assessment to scale. Using Quizzes, teachers are able to automate testing and give feedback to students faster by having Forms check responses against correct answers automatically. Today, we are making that functionality available to developers by extending the Google Apps Script Forms Service. With this feature, you can create and customize quizzes programmatically with Apps Script.

More specifically:
  • Create quizzes 
  • Assign point values and correct answers for questions 
  • Implement custom grading schemes 
Let’s take a look at an example use case and relevant code snippet.

Creating an auto-graded question 

Multiple choice, checkbox and dropdown questions can be auto-graded, which means students can see their grades immediately upon submission. This is done by designating which options are the correct answer. Teachers can also set automatic feedback to show correct or incorrect responses, as well as assign point values to the question.

Here is the Apps Script code that lets you create the quiz above:
function createGradedCheckboxQuestionWithAutofeedback() {
  // Make sure the form is a quiz.
  var form = FormApp.getActiveForm();
  form.setIsQuiz(true);

  // Make a 10 point question and set feedback on it
  var item = FormApp.getActiveForm().addCheckboxItem();
  item.setTitle("What flavors are in neapolitan ice cream?");
  item.setPoints(10);
  // chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry are the correct answers
  item.setChoices([
    item.createChoice("chocolate", true),
    item.createChoice("vanilla", true),
    item.createChoice("rum raisin", false),
    item.createChoice("strawberry", true),
    item.createChoice("mint", false)
  ]);
  // If the respondent answers correctly, they'll see this feedback when they view 
  //scores.
  var correctFeedback = FormApp.createFeedback()
      .setText("You're an ice cream expert!")
      .build();
  item.setFeedbackForCorrect(correctFeedback);
  
  // If they respond incorrectly, they'll see this feedback with helpful links to 
  //read more about ice cream.
  var incorrectFeedback = FormApp.createFeedback()
      .setText("Sorry, wrong answer")
      .addLink(
        "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neapolitan_ice_cream",
        "Read more")
      .build();
  item.setFeedbackForIncorrect(incorrectFeedback);
}
For more details on what you can build with the Apps Script Forms Service, review the documentation, ask questions on Stack Overflow or in the G+ community, and let us know what else you’d like to see using the new public issue tracker for Apps Script.

New Google Drive metrics now accessible from Reports API

Posted by Rio Akasaka, Product Manager, Google Drive and Wesley Chun (@wescpy), G Suite Developer Advocate

You might have read that we launched new metrics in the Admin SDK Reports API to help you gain reliable, easily-validated perspectives about users within your domain. Today, we're building on these features by giving administrators and developers even greater visibility into how files are shared both inside and outside of domain. These changes include:
  1. New metrics to supplement the set of metrics we launched last year 
  2. New visibility information for audit events 
  3. Deprecation of existing metrics from the Reports API

New Metrics

We’ve created a new set of metrics to complete the set we launched last year. With these new metrics you can:
  • Gain insight into the visibility of files and their sharing state, which is useful for security and reporting. This will replace these older metrics:
    num_docs_internally_visible, num_docs_externally_visible, num_docs_shared_outside_domain.
  • Report on product adoption within your domain with summary statistics about groups of users (collaborators, viewers, creators and sharers). Take advantage of key adoption metrics such as 1-, 7-, and 30-day active users for Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Drawings and more. 
  • Simplify your calculation of “what has changed” in your domain using delta metrics which pre-calculate changes in visibility and items owned.

New Visibility Information 

Now, new visibility information is attached to every audit event which helps you quickly identify the permission change events that lead to files being shared differently both within and outside your domain. Learn more.

Deprecating Existing Metrics 

While we’re aware of the need to have reliable and timely data about your domain’s users and files on Google Drive, Drive’s data and infrastructure has grown considerably, requiring us to make some difficult technical tradeoffs regarding metrics. As a result, today marks the beginning of a 12-month deprecation timeline that will retire these existing metrics from the Reports API and eventually the Admin Console. These metrics will no longer be available starting May 14, 2018.

To get started using the Reports API and see all the different types of metrics you can report on for your domain, check out the official documentation. We hope you find these features useful in your reporting.

A new admin privilege for managing custom templates in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms

In November 2016, we introduced custom templates in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms, allowing teams to spend less time formatting and more time brainstorming, collaborating, and sharing their ideas. We also gave G Suite Business, Education, and Enterprise customers the following optional controls in the Admin console:

  • Moderated - require that user-submitted templates be approved by admins with the Drive and Docs admin privilege
  • Restricted - restrict template submission to admins with the Drive and Docs admin privilege
With this launch, it’s no longer necessary to provision the full Drive and Docs privilege to admins who want the ability to moderate and manage templates. Instead, you can grant those admins a new Docs Templates privilege, which gives them the ability to approve templates and modify template settings in the Admin console, but not the authority to change other Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms settings. Admins who retain the full Drive and Docs privilege will continue to be able to manage templates.



This change will allow your organization to manage custom templates in a scalable way, without relinquishing control over sensitive admin settings. For more details on the Docs Templates privilege and for instructions on managing templates, check out the Help Center articles below.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Editions:
Available to G Suite Business, Education, and Enterprise editions only

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Administrator privilege definitions - Docs Templates
Help Center: Enable custom templates for Docs, Sheets, and Slides


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Creating files from templates now easier in Google Drive

Since 2015, we’ve been making it easier to focus on your content—not your formatting—with templates in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms. We’ve introduced templates for invoices, pitch decks, and cases studies, as well as templates designed by experts and developed specifically for your organization.

Today, we’re making it easier for users to create files from templates by granting access to templates directly from Drive. Instead of navigating to the Docs, Sheets, Slides, or Forms home pages, you can simply go to Drive > New > Google Docs/Sheets/Slides/Forms > From a template. From there, you’ll be directed to the applicable template gallery, where you can select the template of your choice.


For more details on templates, visit the Help Center.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid release, with Scheduled release coming in three weeks

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Create a file from a template


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Save time with new custom templates in Docs, Sheets, Slides and Forms

We recently launched new tools in G Suite like Explore, Action items, and other features to help your teams save time and focus on what’s important: creating impactful work, quicker. We know time spent re-creating files in the workplace takes away from the time your team can spend collaborating and achieving results.

That’s why, today, we’re introducing custom templates in G Suite for the Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms files your teams use the most.

Simply submit files to shared template galleries in the Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms home screens for your co-workers to adapt and use as needed. With these customizable templates, your teams can focus less on formatting and more on driving impact and sharing success.


Note that if you disabled template submissions to the old Google Drive templates gallery in the Admin console, users in your organization will not be able to see and use the new galleries when they launch. You can enable the new galleries for your users in the Admin console (Apps > G Suite > Drive and Docs > Templates). You can also configure the categories available for your organization’s templates from that same section in the Admin console.


In addition, G Suite for Business and Education customers can require templates be approved before they appear in the galleries, or prevent end users from submitting new templates altogether. These features are not enabled by default, so you’ll need to update your settings if you want to moderate or restrict template submissions to the galleries.


The old templates gallery will be shut down in early 2017, giving you and your users time to transition to the new galleries. We’ll let you know the exact date with a message in the old gallery, but it will not take place before February 1st, 2017.

An important note regarding this rollout: 
To give you a chance to update your settings and curate your organization’s template galleries, we’re rolling out these features (both in the Admin console and in the home screens) to all admins, regardless of their release track, starting today. We’ll launch to end users on the Rapid release track today as well, with the rollout to end users on the Scheduled release track starting on December 7th. 

Launch Details
Release track:
  • G Suite administrators
    • Launching to both Rapid and Scheduled release
  • G Suite end users
    • Launching to Rapid release, with Scheduled release coming on December 7th

Editions:

  • Template galleries
    • Available to all G Suite editions
  • Moderation and restriction capabilities
    • Available to G Suite for Business and Education customers only

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Enable templates for Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms
Help Center: Create a file from a template


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Five new ways to reach your goals faster with G Suite

(Cross-posted from the The Keyword) 

One of the core promises of Google Docs is to help you and your team go from collecting ideas to achieving your goals as quickly and easily as possible. That’s why last month we launched Explore in Docs, Sheets and Slides — with machine intelligence built right in — to help your team create amazing presentations, spreadsheets and documents in a fraction of the time it used to take.

Today, we’re introducing five new time-saving features designed to speed up and simplify the way you work, so you can focus on bringing your team’s ideas to life.

1. Spend less time figuring out who owns what with Action Items

According to research by the McKinsey Global Institute, employees spend about 20 percent of their work week — nearly an entire day — searching for details internally and tracking down colleagues for answers. This can be especially true when a document is full of ideas, requests and comments, making it difficult to get a clear sense of who’s responsible for what.

To help keep your projects moving, when you type phrases like “Ryan to follow up on the keynote script,” or “Andrea to schedule a weekly check in” on desktop, Docs will intelligently suggest an Action Item to assign to the right person, thanks to Natural Language Processing (NLP).


You can also manually assign an Action Item to someone in the Docs, Sheets and Slides desktop and mobile apps by mentioning their name in a comment and checking the new Action Item box. The assignee will get an email notification and see the Action Item(s) clearly highlighted with a blue bar when they open the file.


2. Spend less time searching for the files that need attention

Once Action Items have been assigned, it’s easy for team members to identify documents, spreadsheets and presentations that need their attention. The next time they visit Docs, Sheets, Slides (or Drive) from their laptops or mobile apps, they’ll see a badge on any files with Action Items assigned to them, plus any unresolved suggestions that others have made to their files.


3. Spend less time building questions with smarter Forms

Since its launch in 2008, more than a billion questions have been asked in Forms, allowing us to identify common patterns, like question types and the response options that usually go with them. With the help of neural networks, we can now predict the type of question you’re asking and suggest potential responses for you to choose from, giving you back about 25 percent of the time you used to spend creating a Form.

Let’s say you’re planning an all-day event at the office and need to know which day works best for your team. When you type “What days are you available next week?” Forms will intelligently determine that “Checkbox” is the ideal question type, and generate related response options that you can add one by one or all together.


Also debuting today is a top-requested feature from our business and education customers — the new “File upload” question type. Your respondents can now upload files from their computer or Drive — all of which are neatly collected for you in a new Drive folder. Note: This feature is only available for G Suite customers in Forms shared within their organization.


4. Spend less time typing with a set of new voice commands

Last year, we launched Voice typing in Docs on the web to help you capture ideas, big and small, without lifting a finger. Today, we’re adding more ways to format and customize content with commands for changing text color, deleting words, inserting links and comments, plus a number of other ways to format, hands-free.

5. Spend less time switching between apps to get things done

We want you to be as productive and collaborative as possible, regardless of the tools you choose to work with, so we’ve partnered with Slack to make it even easier to work with Google Docs files. With a click of the "+" button in Slack, you can bring files from Drive directly into a conversation with your team, or create new Docs, Sheets and Slides files right from Slack. You can check out more details on Slack’s blog.


With the introduction of Explore, and more and more updates to products that build in machine intelligence, taking back time spent on mundane, repetitive tasks will only get easier with G Suite. Now, you can focus your energy on creative and strategic work, not busy work.

Launch Details
Release track:
  • Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release
    • Assigned action items
    • Priority badges
    • Voice typing improvements
    • Slack integration
  • Launching to Rapid release, with Scheduled release coming on November 2nd, 2016
    • Suggested action items
    • Suggested response options in Forms
  • Launching to Rapid release, with Scheduled release coming on November 9th, 2016
    • File uploads in Forms
Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Add, edit, reply, or delete comments
Help Center: Edit your form
Help Center: Type with your voice
Slack Blog


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Add images to questions and answers in Google Forms

Google Forms makes it easy to create, distribute, and analyze surveys. Starting today, you can craft even more effective forms by inserting images into survey questions or adding images as multiple choice or checkbox options in Forms on the web.

For example, a graphic designer might ask a business owner to to pick one of three different logos, pictures of which would be offered as multiple choice answers.
Or a chef might include a photo of her famous burger between a question asking diners their opinion of it and the section provided for their answer.
For more information on creating and editing surveys in Forms, check out the Help Center.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Edit your form

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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Taking learning beyond classroom walls with new features for Back to School

Posted by Dina Kachintseva, Classroom Software Engineer and Felix Wang, User Experience Designer

As any teacher would tell you, the classroom isn’t the only place where learning happens — it’s just the tip of the iceberg. From parents who help students with homework, to extracurriculars, field trips and more, there are so many ways students can learn beyond the walls of the classroom. This is why today we’re announcing new features to help teachers inspire learning for students, regardless of place or time.

Parents and guardians stay informed with Google Classroom email summaries


Parent participation has a major impact on student learning. Today, we’re launching a new feature in Google Classroom that will automatically share summaries of student work with parents. Once invited by a teacher, parents and guardians can receive automated daily or weekly email summaries of student work and class announcements, making it easier to stay up-to-date on what’s happening in the classroom.
“I enjoy helping my children prepare for assignments that they have coming up – and the earlier I know about them, the better,” says Michelle Barrette, a mother of five Medfield, Massachusetts students and pilot user of the new Classroom feature. “This way I can prevent them from missing deadlines and see if they need help brainstorming topics or solutions.”

Annotations help students color outside the lines — and the classroom


When teachers want to help students understand complex math or science concepts, visuals — like drawings on a whiteboard — can help. But how does this work when students and teachers aren’t in the classroom together? Today, we’re announcing the ability to annotate documents in the Google Classroom mobile app.

Using annotations, students can complete assignments, sketch out math problems or even create visuals of creative ideas directly on their devices. This gives students a portable classroom whiteboard on which they can easily draw and sketch. Now, thinking through complex homework challenges from home, school or on the bus is even easier. 

Teachers can use annotations to quickly grade assignments by writing directly on the student’s work, or highlighting the most important passages in a text or novel. Anne Farrahar, an English teacher in the Medfield Public Schools district, explains how her lessons benefitted from her high school students annotating a critique of Shakespeare’s "The Merchant of Venice." “They highlighted all the ideas they thought were convincing arguments in one color, and all the ideas they disagreed with in another color,” says Farrahar. “This gave me the chance to assess students' individual understanding and, based on their responses, gather ideas for future lessons.” 


More Expeditions thousands of miles away or inside the human body


Have you ever wondered what it would be like to visit the White House Kitchen Garden or what it would be like to travel inside the human body? Today we’re announcing new Expeditions that bring students far beyond the usual places they can travel. With these adventures, like a visit to Bhutan or an exploration of the human vascular systems, teachers are able to deeply immerse students in lessons, creating vivid and memorable learning experiences.
In addition, the Expeditions app is coming soon to iOS. More teachers, including those who use iPads, will be able to share Expeditions with their students by using full-screen mode on the devices in place of a VR viewer. With over 200 Expeditions available, we’re excited for them to experience these virtual field trips on more devices. 

More Google for Education features for busy teachers and curious minds


 In celebration of the new school year, we’re excited to share more new tools for teachers and students to break down traditional barriers within the classroom: 
  • A more organized Classroom. To make Classroom even easier to use, teachers can organize the class stream by adding topics to posts, and teachers and students can filter the stream for specific topics. Plus, users can now preview documents, PDFs, images and videos, all without leaving Classroom. 
  • Share your screens wirelessly at school. With the latest Chrome update, Cast for Education is now available to all teachers and students. This free Chrome app carries video and audio across complex school networks and has built-in controls for teachers — no new hardware required. Look out for updates including support for secondary domains coming soon. 
  • Google Forms get an upgrade with images. In Forms, teachers can now add images to questions or as multiple choice answers. This is perfect for subjects like math when students need to show their understanding of diagrams and graphs. 
  • Inbox by Gmail for the classroom. Inbox by Gmail is rolling out to Google for Education users. Coming soon, email notifications from Classroom will be intelligently grouped in Inbox, making it easy for teachers and students to find important updates and highlights. 
Whether students are at home or in the classroom, teachers can continue to inspire and support their curiosity with Expeditions, Classroom, Apps and Chromebooks. Stay tuned this week on Google+ and Twitter for more details on these exciting new tools. 

Top UK CIO explains how to create a 5-star digital hotel experience

Posted by Chris Hewertson, CTO of glh

Editor's note: Today’s post is from Chris Hewertson, CTO of glh, the largest owner-operator hotel company in London with over 5,000 rooms throughout London as well as two locations in Malaysia. Chris was recently named “disruptive player in the crowded hotels market” in the CIO top 100 list. Here, he shares his secrets to success.

In 2013, we launched the world’s fastest hotel wi-fi and put our focus on digital. We had big ideas to transform our business, and we knew we couldn’t do it alone.

We’re always looking for new and innovative technology solutions that can help us deliver the best guest-centred experience in hospitality. Hosted services and real-time responses are becoming more and more of a basic customer expectation in other industries so we thought, why not hotels? We worked with implementation partner Cloudreach to adopt Google Apps as our fully integrated, enterprise-wide cloud collaboration and storage solution.

Let product enthusiasts within your teams help usher a smooth adoption

With over 33 hotels, more than 1000 users and nearly 4 million files, how were we going to move everything and everyone onto Google Apps for Work? The answer was obvious – Jedis.

Well, not Jedis exactly, but pretty close. Our nominated Google Guides were a group of 65 champions across all our locations and departments – from night managers to head housekeepers – who helped kick-start our Google Apps for Work adoption. Their support and enthusiasm for the tools meant we could truly bring Google Apps for Work into every part of our business.

Not only did they help us cut down old and unused data as part of the migration process (we have now almost halved our original 3 million files), they encouraged everyone to use the tools for creative solutions. This is a great example of how a user led change approach can lead to high levels of engagement and adoption while minimising the need for a traditional data migration.

Find creative ways to use new tools to improve customer experience

At glh, we take guest complaints seriously and try to accommodate each request as much as we can. At our biggest hotel, room moves and changes happen daily. Guests move rooms to be closer to their travelling party, away from their boss (yes, really) or even to avoid odd numbers.

Before Google, this would cause major disruption across a number of teams from Housekeeping to Concierge. Now, all teams can see and edit real-time room changes in Sheets, and housekeepers can even use it on their mobiles. As a result, we’ve significantly minimized delays, confusion and complaints.

From internal invites to office polls, Forms has been a welcome addition to the working lives of all of us at glh. Now we have a form that allows staff to check out a guest from anywhere in the hotel in seconds. No more printed paper that was popped into a box at reception.


Invest big savings from new technology tools into workplace improvements

Trans-atlantic Hangout conversations have led to a 42% reduction in conference call charges. Hourly printouts of various logs and reports of over 1,000 pages are now shareable digital Docs that are securely stored on Drive. The logs are updated in real time and available on any device.

It’s just over a year since we introduced Google Apps for Work, and in that time we’ve made so many apps-based ideas a reality – like our Manager of the Month initiative, where everyone votes using a Form.

Our Google Guides, who were so central to our training and awareness a year ago, are still coming up with new suggestions all the time – it’s amazing how creative people can be.

Give feedback faster with Quizzes in Google Forms

Posted by Tynia Yang, Software Engineer, Google Forms

Editor's note: On Monday, we announced four new ways to help teachers engage their classes using Google tools. In this post, we’ll dive deeper into one of these tools: Quizzes in Google Forms . If you are at ISTE in Denver, visit us at booth #2511 in the expo hall to learn more and demo our new tools.

Educators have told us that collecting feedback earlier in the learning process results in better outcomes for both teachers and students. But they’ve also shared that creating assessments and providing feedback can lead to hours of repetitive grading.

Dr. Ismael Piedra, a professor at the Instituto Technologico de Monterrey, for example, used “exit tickets” after his lectures to check student comprehension. But his attempts at gathering quick feedback would often result in 300 quizzes to grade and hours of work.

After months of pilots with educators like Dr. Piedra, we launched Quizzes in Google Forms on Monday to help teachers quickly create, deliver and grade assignments or assessments. With Quizzes, teachers can select correct answers for multiple choice and checkbox questions to reduce repetitive grading. They can also enter explanations and review materials to help students learn. And to make sure students understand the lesson material, teachers can prevent students from sending themselves a copy of their responses.

Nick Marchese, a music and programming teacher at the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn, uses Quizzes in Google Forms to adapt his teaching throughout the learning process. “Quizzes help me optimize my teaching,” he explains. “After students take a quiz, I can check the summary of responses to see frequently missed questions and a visual representation of student scores. If I see there’s a question that a lot of students got wrong, then we start the next class by reviewing it.” Nick says that students love the immediate feedback they get while he loves how Quizzes can “automatically check multiple-choice questions and reduce time devoted to grading.”
Effie Kleinberg of Bnei Akiva Schools in Toronto, likes that Quizzes reduce the overhead of giving formative assessments. “Quizzes make it quick and easy to create and grade a student assessment,” he says. Effie posts his Quizzes as assignments in Google Classroom, where he is easily able to keep track of student responses and view results. Students receive quick, actionable feedback though explanations and review materials, without requiring Effie to manually grade each quiz.

We made Quizzes available to all Google Forms users so we can continue improving based on your feedback. Tasks like automating repetitive grading are just the beginning, so we look forward to hearing what you think. Get started by creating your first Quiz today!