It’s Time To Chat … With a Little Help From Our Friends
It’s time to chat. No better way to do this in G Suite for Business or G Suite for Education than with Google Hangouts Chat.
And why not invite a few of our “friends”?
With so many recently forced into remote work, organizations are scrambling to find solutions to keep their teams safely connected.
Whether you’re a large geographically diverse team or a small local team there’s an easy G Suite solution — Google Hangouts Chat rooms.
Not only are Hangouts Chat rooms great for team conversation and communication, they enable us to get more done with a little help from our friends … Hangouts Chatbot “friends” that is.
👉 If you’re new to Hangouts Chat or Hangouts Chatbots, see my previous post and this Google Hangouts Chatbot article.
There are two primary types of Hangouts Chatbots:
👉 Conversation bots
👉 Notification (webhook) bots
Conversation chat bots are powerful, two-way dialog partners with an endless array of possibilities including scheduling a meeting or collaborating on Google Docs.
For a list of existing Hangouts Chatbots see this site.
Notification chat bots are equally powerful, one-way dialog partners also with an endless array of possibilities. That’s why I recently updated TSFormBot.
TSFormBot is a simple Apps Script powered Hangouts Chat notification bot to assist teams in sending Google Form submission notifications to Hangouts Chat rooms.
TSFormBot has been updated to include form responses making it easy to visualize submissions without leaving the Hangouts Chat room. This enables teams to discuss or manage notifications as they’re posted to the room.
Bonus! Multiple TSFormBot enabled forms can post to the same Hangouts Chat room.💥
I recently gave a presentation at SheetsCon where I stepped through a simple purchase request workflow automation. The workflow employed Google Forms along with several other G Suite services, all tied together with Apps Script.
Diagram #1 depicts a similar TSFormBot enabled purchase request form submission posted to a Hangouts Chat room.
If you missed my presentation (or any other of the SheetsCon presentations), you can see the replay here and read the workflow overview post here.
TSFormBot is not only applicable for business forms, but education forms too.
Diagram #2 shows a simple course evaluation form notification posted to a Hangouts Chat room.
We’ll talk more in future posts about conversation and notification Hangouts Chatbots and how to get started developing them with Apps Script.
Looking for a similar solution for your G Suite domain? See the TSFormBot project, installation and getting started guide on Github.
Need help automating workflow inside your G Suite domain? Get in touch
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