Tag Archives: Google Slides

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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Insert videos from Google Drive in Google Slides

Starting today, you can insert and play your Google Drive videos in Google Slides, in addition to videos from YouTube.


Once you’ve added a Drive video to your presentation, you can choose when to start and end it, whether it should autoplay when presenting, and whether it should be muted or play with audio. Simply right-click on the video and select Video options.


If a person viewing your presentation doesn’t have permission to view a video embedded within it, they’ll be prompted to request access.

Note that while you can play Drive videos in Slides on the web and mobile, you can only insert them from the web application. For more details, visit the Help Center.

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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

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

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Insert or delete images or videos


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G Suite Developer Sessions at Google Cloud Next 2017

Originally posted on the G Suite Developers Blog

Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, G Suite

There are over 200 sessions happening next month at Google Cloud's Next 2017 conferencein San Francisco... so many choices! Along with content geared towards Google Cloud Platform, this year features the addition of G Suite so all 3 pillars of cloud computing (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) are represented!


There are already thousands of developers including Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) creating solutions to help schools and enterprises running the G Suite collaboration and productivity suite (formerly Google Apps). If you're thinking about becoming one, consider building applications that extend, enhance, and integrate G Suite apps and data with other mission critical systems to help businesses and educational institutions succeed.


Looking for inspiration? Here's a preview of some of the sessions that current and potential G Suite developers should consider:


The first is intro blog post & video for the latest Google Sheets API as well as the intro blog post & video for the Google Slides API. Part of the talk also covers Google Apps Script, the Javascript-in-the-cloud solution that gives developers programmatic access to authorized G Suite data along with the ability to connect to other Google and external services.


If that's not enough Apps Script for you, or you're new to that technology, swing by to hear its Product Manager give you an introduction in his talk, quick intro video to give you an idea of what you can do with it!


Did you know that Apps Script also powers "add-ons" which extend the functionality of Google Docs, Sheets, and Forms? Then come to "the G Suite Marketplace where administrators or employees can install your add-ons for their organizations.


In addition to Apps Script apps, all your Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides documents live in Google Drive. But did you know that Drive is not just for individual file storage? Hear directly from a Drive Product Manager on how you can, "the Drive API and Team Drives, you can extend what Drive can do for your organization. One example from the most recent Google I/O tells the story of how WhatsApp used the Drive API to back up all your conversations! To get started with your own Drive API integration, check out this blog post and short video. Confused by when you should use Google Drive or Google Cloud Storage? I've got an app, err video, for that too! :-)


Not a software engineer but still code as part of your profession? Want to build a custom app for your department or line of business without having to worry about IT overhead? You may have heard about Google App Maker, our low-code development tool that does exactly that. Curious to learn more about it? Hear directly from its Product Manager lead in his talk entitled, "

All of these talks are just waiting for you at Next, the best place to get your feet wet developing for G Suite, and of course, the Google Cloud Platform. Start by checking out the session schedule. Next will also offer many opportunities to meet and interact with industry peers along with representatives from all over Google who love the cloud. Register today and see you in San Francisco!




G Suite Developer Sessions at Google Cloud Next 2017

Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, G Suite

There are over 200 sessions happening next month at Google Cloud's Next 2017 conferencein San Francisco... so many choices! Along with content geared towards Google Cloud Platform, this year features the addition of G Suite so all 3 pillars of cloud computing (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) are represented!


There are already thousands of developers including Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) creating solutions to help schools and enterprises running the G Suite collaboration and productivity suite (formerly Google Apps). If you're thinking about becoming one, consider building applications that extend, enhance, and integrate G Suite apps and data with other mission critical systems to help businesses and educational institutions succeed.


Looking for inspiration? Here's a preview of some of the sessions that current and potential G Suite developers should consider:


The first is intro blog post & video for the latest Google Sheets API as well as the intro blog post & video for the Google Slides API. Part of the talk also covers Google Apps Script, the Javascript-in-the-cloud solution that gives developers programmatic access to authorized G Suite data along with the ability to connect to other Google and external services.


If that's not enough Apps Script for you, or you're new to that technology, swing by to hear its Product Manager give you an introduction in his talk, quick intro video to give you an idea of what you can do with it!


Did you know that Apps Script also powers "add-ons" which extend the functionality of Google Docs, Sheets, and Forms? Then come to "the G Suite Marketplace where administrators or employees can install your add-ons for their organizations.


In addition to Apps Script apps, all your Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides documents live in Google Drive. But did you know that Drive is not just for individual file storage? Hear directly from a Drive Product Manager on how you can, "the Drive API and Team Drives, you can extend what Drive can do for your organization. One example from the most recent Google I/O tells the story of how WhatsApp used the Drive API to back up all your conversations! To get started with your own Drive API integration, check out this blog post and short video. Confused by when you should use Google Drive or Google Cloud Storage? I've got an app, err video, for that too! :-)


Not a software engineer but still code as part of your profession? Want to build a custom app for your department or line of business without having to worry about IT overhead? You may have heard about Google App Maker, our low-code development tool that does exactly that. Curious to learn more about it? Hear directly from its Product Manager lead in his talk entitled, "

All of these talks are just waiting for you at Next, the best place to get your feet wet developing for G Suite, and of course, the Google Cloud Platform. Start by checking out the session schedule. Next will also offer many opportunities to meet and interact with industry peers along with representatives from all over Google who love the cloud. Register today and see you in San Francisco!




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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Legacy versions of Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides mobile apps shutting down on April 3, 2017

On April 3, 2017, we will shut down older versions of the following Android and iOS applications: 

  • Google Drive for Android (prior to version 2.4.311)
  • Google Docs for Android (prior to version 1.6.292)
  • Google Sheets for Android (prior to version 1.6.292)
  • Google Slides for Android (prior to version 1.6.292)


  • Google Drive for iOS (prior to version 4.16)
  • Google Docs for iOS (prior to version 1.2016.12204)
  • Google Sheets for iOS (prior to version 1.2016.12208)
  • Google Slides for iOS (prior to version 1.2016.12203)

This month, users of these legacy versions will begin seeing the below prompts to upgrade. Please note that after March 1, some users with very old versions will be forced to upgrade when they receive the prompt.


If you are using any of these unsupported versions, we encourage you to download and install the latest version of that mobile application. Note that corresponding web and desktop applications will not be affected by this change. On most devices, you can find an app’s version type in its settings menu.


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Page setup and ODF and EPUB support in the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides Android apps

New versions of the Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps for Android are now available on Google Play, including the following new features to help you get more done on the move:

Page setup in Google Docs and image support improvements in Sheets
You can now change the orientation, paper size, and page color Docs on Android. In Sheets, you can use the IMAGE function to view images inside of cells.





EPUB and ODF support on Android
Docs now supports exporting your files in the EPUB (.epub) and OpenDocument Text (.odt) file formats. Additionally, you can now import OpenDocument Text (.odt) files from the Android app. Similarly, you will now be able to import and export OpenDocument Spreadsheets (.ods) in Sheets and OpenDocument Presentations (.odp) in Slides.

Please note: these features are only available when the device is online. When the device is offline, an error dialog will show saying "Data connection needed to open this file type".


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

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

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

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI


More Information
Help Center: Page setup
How to use Google Slides
How to use Google Docs
How to use Google Sheets


Formatting text with the Google Slides API

Originally posted on G Suite Developers blog

Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, G Suite

It's common knowledge that presentations utilize a set of images to impart ideas to the audience. As a result, one of the best practices for creating great slide decks is to minimize the overall amount of text. It means that if you do have text in a presentation, the (few) words you use must have higher impact and be visually appealing. This is even more true when the slides are generated by a software application, say using the Google Slides API, rather than being crafted by hand.

The G Suite team recently launched the first Slides API, opening up a whole new category of applications. Since then, we've published several videos to help you realize some of those possibilities, showing you how to replace text and images in slides as well as how to generate slides from spreadsheet data. To round out this trifecta of key API use cases, we're adding text formatting to the conversation.

Developers manipulate text in Google Slides by sending API requests. Similar to the Google Sheets API, these requests come in the form of JSON payloads sent to the API's batchUpdate() method. Here's the JavaScript for inserting text in some shape (shapeID) on a slide: 

{
    "insertText": {
        "objectId": shapeID,
        "text": "Hello World!\n"
}

In the video, developers learn that writing text, such as the request above, is less complex than reading or formatting because both the latter require developers to know how text on a slide is structured. Notice for writing that just the copy, and optionally an index, are all that's required. (That index defaults to zero if not provided.)

Assuming "Hello World!" has been successfully inserted in a shape on a slide, a request to bold just the "Hello" looks like this: 

{
    "updateTextStyle": {
        "objectId": shapeID,
        "style": {
            "bold": true
        },
        "textRange": {
            "type": "FIXED_RANGE",
            "startIndex": 0,
            "endIndex": 5
        },
        "fields": "bold"
}
If you've got at least one request, like the ones above, in an array named requests, you'd ask the API to execute them with just one call to the API, which in Python looks like this (assuming SLIDES is your service endpoint and the slide deck ID is deckID): 
SLIDES.presentations().batchUpdate(presentationId=deckID,
        body=requests).execute()

To better understand text structure & styling in Google Slides, check out the text concepts guidein the documentation. For a detailed look at the complete code sample featured in the DevByte, check out the deep dive post. To see more samples for common API operations, take a look at this page. We hope the videos and all these developer resources help you create that next great app that automates producing highly impactful presentations for your users!

Formatting text with the Google Slides API

Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, G Suite

It's common knowledge that presentations utilize a set of images to impart ideas to the audience. As a result, one of the best practices for creating great slide decks is to minimize the overall amount of text. It means that if you do have text in a presentation, the (few) words you use must have higher impact and be visually appealing. This is even more true when the slides are generated by a software application, say using the Google Slides API, rather than being crafted by hand.

The G Suite team recently launched the first Slides API, opening up a whole new category of applications. Since then, we've published several videos to help you realize some of those possibilities, showing you how to replace text and images in slides as well as how to generate slides from spreadsheet data. To round out this trifecta of key API use cases, we're adding text formatting to the conversation.

Developers manipulate text in Google Slides by sending API requests. Similar to the Google Sheets API, these requests come in the form of JSON payloads sent to the API's batchUpdate() method. Here's the JavaScript for inserting text in some shape (shapeID) on a slide: 

{
    "insertText": {
        "objectId": shapeID,
        "text": "Hello World!\n"
}

In the video, developers learn that writing text, such as the request above, is less complex than reading or formatting because both the latter require developers to know how text on a slide is structured. Notice for writing that just the copy, and optionally an index, are all that's required. (That index defaults to zero if not provided.)

Assuming "Hello World!" has been successfully inserted in a shape on a slide, a request to bold just the "Hello" looks like this: 

{
    "updateTextStyle": {
        "objectId": shapeID,
        "style": {
            "bold": true
        },
        "textRange": {
            "type": "FIXED_RANGE",
            "startIndex": 0,
            "endIndex": 5
        },
        "fields": "bold"
}
If you've got at least one request, like the ones above, in an array named requests, you'd ask the API to execute them with just one call to the API, which in Python looks like this (assuming SLIDES is your service endpoint and the slide deck ID is deckID): 
SLIDES.presentations().batchUpdate(presentationId=deckID,
        body=requests).execute()

To better understand text structure & styling in Google Slides, check out the text concepts guidein the documentation. For a detailed look at the complete code sample featured in the DevByte, check out the deep dive post. To see more samples for common API operations, take a look at this page. We hope the videos and all these developer resources help you create that next great app that automates producing highly impactful presentations for your users!

Generating slides from spreadsheet data

Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, G Suite

The G Suite team recently launched the very first Google Slides API, opening up a whole new set of possibilities, including leveraging data already sitting in a spreadsheet or database, and programmatically generating slide decks or slide content based on that data. Why is this a big deal? One of the key advantages of slide decks is that they can take database or spreadsheet data and make it more presentable for human consumption. This is useful when the need arises to communicate the information reflected by that data to management or potential customers.

Walking developers through a short application demonstrating both the Sheets and Slides APIs to make this happen is the topic of today's DevByte video. The sample app starts by reading all the necessary data from the spreadsheet using the Sheets API. The Slides API takes over from there, creating new slides for the data, then populating those slides with the Sheets data.

Developers interact with Slides by sending API requests. Similar to the Google Sheets API, these requests come in the form of JSON payloads. You create an array like in the JavaScript pseudocode below featuring requests to create a cell table on a slide and import a chart from a Sheet:


var requests = [
   {"createTable": {
       "elementProperties":
           {"pageObjectId": slideID},
       "rows": 8,
       "columns": 4
   }},
   {"createSheetsChart": {
       "spreadsheetId": sheetID,
       "chartId": chartID,
       "linkingMode": "LINKED",
       "elementProperties": {
           "pageObjectId": slideID,
           "size": {
               "height": { ... },
               "width": { ... }
           },
           "transform": { ... }
       }
   }}
];
If you've got at least one request, say in a variable named requests (as above), including the Sheet's sheetID and chartID plus the presentation page's slideID. You'd then pass it to the API with just one call to the presentations().batchUpdate() command, which in Python looks like the below if SLIDES is your API service endpoint:
SLIDES.presentations().batchUpdate(presentationId=slideID,
       body=requests).execute()

Creating tables is fairly straightforward. Creating charts has some magical features, one of those being the linkingMode. A value of "LINKED" means that if the Sheet data changes (altering the chart in the Sheet), the same chart in a slide presentation can be refreshed to match the latest image, either by the API or in the Slides user interface! You can also request a plain old static image that doesn't change with the data by selecting a value of "NOT_LINKED_IMAGE" for linkingMode. More on this can be found in the documentationon creating charts, and check out the video where you'll see both those API requests in action.

For a detailed look at the complete code sample featured in the video, check out the deep dive post. We look forward to seeing the interesting integrations you build with the power of both APIs!