How to Create Forms that allow File Uploads to Google Drive

With File Upload Forms (demo) for Google Sheets, you can receive large files from anyone directly in your Google Drive. You can automatically send email confirmations to the notify the form respondent. The forms can be created inside Google Sheets using the built-in drag-n-drop form builder and the forms can CAPTCHAs, e-signature and more.

A school teacher may want to build forms for students to upload assignments and the files are automatically saved to her Google Drive but in separate student folders. The HR team may want an online form where job applicants can upload their resumes in PDF or Word format. Business can build forms with eSignatures that respondents can sign on their desktops and mobile phones.

Google Forms do allow file uploads but the respondents need to be signed into their Google accounts before they can upload files. File Upload Forms impose no such limitations – anyone can upload files to your Google Drive. They may not have a Google account and they’ll still be able to use your Drive uploader forms.

File Upload Forms – Getting Started

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can build your own File Upload Forms in a few minutes. Or watch the YouTube video to get started.

Step 1. Copy the Google Sheet for File Upload Forms

The File Upload Form is written in Google Scripts and the code needs to be attached to your Google Sheet for it to work.

To get started, go to forms.studio/copy and click the “Copy” button to create a copy of the Google Sheet template to your Google Drive. This sheet includes the form builder, email designer and it will also be storing your form responses just like Google Forms responses are stored inside Google Sheets.

Step 2. Deploy the Uploader form as Web App

Inside your Google Spreadsheet, go to Tools -> Script Editor to open the Google Script editor. Don’t worry, you don’t have to write a single line of code, you only have to deploy this script as a web app so anyone can access your form via a simple web URL.

Go to Publish -> Deploy as Web App, choose Me under Execute the app as, choose Anyone, even Anonymous under Who has access to the web app and click the Deploy button.

You may have to authorize the script once since it has to do all the operations – like sending emails, uploading files – on your behalf.

Also, if you get the “App Not Verified” screen, just click on the Advanced link and choose “Go to File Upload Forms” to continue. While this step is optional, you can submit your app to Google for verification and they’ll drop the ‘not verified’ warning.

Step 3. Design the File Uploader Form

Switch to the Google Sheet, expand the File Upload Forms menu (near Help) and choose Edit Form. It will launch a simple but powerful drag-n-drop form builder right inside your Google Sheets.

Your forms can have multiple file upload fields, eSignatures, date, time picker, and all the standard form fields. Use the Rich HTML field to embed YouTube videos, Google Maps, SoundCloud MP3s, Google Slide presentations, Images or any HTML content.

You can also add data validation rules to various form fields using simple regular expressions. The file upload fields can be configured to accept single or multiple files. You can also limit uploads to specific types like images, videos, zip, and more.

Step 4. Customize the Form’s Settings

After your form is designed, go back to the File Upload Forms menu and choose Configure Form. It will open a sidebar in your Google Sheet where you can customize the form and Google Drive settings.

The confirmation message can include place-markers – form fields enclosed inside double curly braces like – for personalized messages. You can also place a URL inside the Redirect option and respondents would be redirected to that website after submitting the form.

In the advanced settings section, click the Select Folder button to choose the parent folder in your Google Drive where all the files would be saved. You can also specify a sub-folder path for storing files and this path can be dynamic – \\\\ – based on form answers.

You can also change color schemes, track visits to your form with Google Analytics and protect your forms with Google CAPTCHA and passwords.

Step 5. Send Confirmation Emails

With File Upload Forms, you can send email notifications when people submit the form. The emails can be personalized by including the form fields in the email subject and message body.

Use the special place marker in the message body to include a summary of the form response in a neat table. The TO, CC or BCC field can include the where you ask for the email address and it will be replaced with the actual value in the form response.

That’s it.

Your form is now ready for the world. Expand the Share section and you’ll be given the URL to directly access the form and also the embed code for adding that form to any website.

You can use Gmail Mail Merge to send the form link to all your contacts in a personalized email. The  Document Studio add-on can help you create beautiful, pixel-perfect PDFs from the form response and they are auto-saved in Google Drive.

Things to Know – File Upload Forms

• To stop accepting new responses, go to Publish -> Deploy as web app menu and click the Disable link.
• If you wish to restrict the forms to users inside your GSuite organization, choose your domain under Who has access to the app in place of Anonymous.

File Upload Forms – Compare Plans

File Upload Forms for Google Drive require a license for extended use. The basic version is free, however.

	Personal	Business	Enterprise
Form Responses	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Number of Forms	1	5	Unlimited
Drag & Drop Form Builder
Customized Confirmations
Email Notifications
Redirect on Form Submit
Multiple Color Schemes
Google CAPTCHA
Save Files in Custom Folders
RegEx Input Validation
Upload Multiple Files
E-Signature Fields
Capture Browser’s User Agent
Technical Support	Email	Email	Phone
Price per year	$29 (Buy)	$49 (Buy)	$199 (Buy)

The post How to Create Forms that allow File Uploads to Google Drive appeared first on Digital Inspiration.

from Digital Inspiration Technology Blog http://bit.ly/2iSNWSv

YouTube Uploader – Let Others Upload Videos to your YouTube Channel

It is easy to upload videos to your own YouTube channel but there’s one limitation. Only the owner of the channel can upload videos to their YouTube account and they cannot delegate the task to someone else in the team.

Google Drive has the concept of shared folders. A folder can have multiple collaborators and anyone can upload files to that folder. Wouldn’t it be useful if such a feature were available for YouTube channels as well? You maintain a single YouTube account and multiple people can upload videos to your common account without the owner having their the Google account credentials with anyone.

YouTube Video Uploader for Collaboration

Introducing YouTube Uploader, a simple file upload form that lets anyone upload videos to your YouTube channel from their desktop or mobile phone. The uploader doesn’t even need a Google account and they’ll still be able to upload video files of any size to your YouTube channel.

Before we get into the implementation details, open this live demo page and upload a video file. Once the file is uploaded, YouTube will take a minute or two to process the video and it will go live immediately on the YouTube channel.

Make your Own YouTube Uploader

If you have a collaborative YouTube channel with multiple contributors, you may consider setting up your own private YouTube Uploader form and any of the contributors will be able to upload their work on your channel directly via the form.

Here’s how you can build a YouTube uploader in 3 easy steps.

1. Click here to make a copy of the YouTube uploader script in your Google Drive. It is recommended that you create a new Google account to test the YouTube uploader before using it with your main account.
2. Enable the YouTube API for your Google project. Go to Resources > Cloud Platform Project, click the project name and enable the YouTube Data API from the API library. Watch the video guide for details.
3. While inside the script editor, go to Publish > Deploy as Web App and click Update.
4. You’ll be presented with an authorization screen as the script needs permission to upload videos on your behalf and also send email notifications when a new video is uploaded. Click Allow.

That’s it. You’ll be presented with a unique URL that you can share with your team members.

The user is presented with a simple web form where they can fill in the video title, description, the video category, and the privacy mode (should the video be private,  public or unlisted). All they have to do is select a file and click “Upload” to send the video to your YouTube channel directly.

Important Points to Know:

• When deploying the web app,  choose “Me” under the “Execute the App as” section and “Anyone, even anonymous” under the “Who has access to the app” section.
• If you would like to disable the uploader, go to Resources > Deploy as web app and choose “Disable web app.”
• The uploader is written in JavaScript (ES6) and compiled to Google Apps Script with Babel, Clasp and the Apps Script starter kit.
• Keep the YouTube Uploader URL secret and only share with people you know.
• This program comes as it is with no warranty. It may not be used for commercial applications.

The post YouTube Uploader – Let Others Upload Videos to your YouTube Channel appeared first on Digital Inspiration.

from Digital Inspiration Technology Blog http://bit.ly/2skT30X

How to Monitor your Website’s Uptime with Google Sheets

Would you like to receive instant email alerts as soon as your website goes down or is inaccessible to users? Most website monitoring services follow the “freemium” model – they have free plans for basic downtime and uptime monitoring of a website but you need to pay for unlimited email or SMS alerts. You may also need to upgrade to monitor multiple websites. There’s a good alternate though.

Make your own Website Uptime Monitor with Google Sheets and Gmail

You can create your own website monitor that runs on Google servers and sends email alerts via Gmail when your website goes down or is back up and accessible again. The website monitor logs all events in a Google Spreadsheet or you can even choose to record store the uptime and downtime activity inside Google Analytics.

How to Setup Website Monitor

Here’s how you quickly configure Google Sheets to monitor the uptime /downtime of any public website. The setup has to be done just once and the Google Apps Script attached to the Google Spreadsheet will continuously monitor your sites in the background.

Let’s get started:

1. Click here to copy the website monitoring Google sheet into your Google Drive.
2. Go to the Website Monitor menu (near Help) and choose Configure. You may have to authorize the script the first time you configure the monitor.
3. Specify your website URL and the email address where you wish to be notified. You can put multiple addresses separated by commas.
4. This is option. Enter the Google Analytics Id (e.g., UA-123456-78) and the site monitor will log downtime / uptime events in  your Analytics account.

Click the Start button and the Google sheet will start monitoring your website in the background. You may now close the sheet.

The uptime and downtime times are logged in theGoogle Spreadsheet so you can use that data to analyze the performance of your web hosting company.

How to Monitor Multiple Websites?

The website monitor is open-source (Github) under MIT License. You can check our Google Apps Script page to discover more interesting projects made with Google Scripts.

If you would like to monitor more than one website with app, make a copy of the same Google Sheet and specify another website URL in the sheet.

How Website Monitor works?

Internally, a Google Script attached to the Google Sheet is doing the monitoring and logging events in Google Sheets and Google Analytics.

The script triggers every few minutes and then tries to fetch your website using URLFetchApp, a Google service similar to wget or curl. If the HTTP response code is anything other than 200, it indicates that there’s an issue with your website and an email alert is sent via the Gmail API.

** A previous version of the script had the ability to send SMS text messages when your website goes down. The functionality is now removed since Google no longer support text alert notifications inside Google Calendar.

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from Digital Inspiration Technology Blog http://bit.ly/2iSYOO9