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3 new tools to help improve your Apps Script development and management experience

January 11, 2018
Ted Bradley

Product Manager, G Suite Developer Platform

Paul McReynolds

Product Manager, Apps Script

Apps Script has come a long way since we first launched scripting with Google Sheets. Now, Apps Script supports more than 5 million weekly active scripts that are integrated with a host of G Suite apps, and more than 1 billion daily executions.

As developers increasingly rely on Apps Script for mission-critical enterprise applications, we've redoubled our efforts to improve its power, reliability and operational monitoring, like our recently announced integration with Stackdriver for logging and error reporting. Today, we’re providing three new tools to help further improve your workflows and manage Apps Script projects:

  1. Apps Script dashboard, to help you manage, debug and monitor all of your projects in one place. 
  2. Apps Script API, so you can programmatically manage Apps Script source files, versions and deployments. 
  3. Apps Script Command Line Interface, for easy access to Apps Script API functionality from your terminal and shell scripts. 

Apps Script dashboard 

Over the next few weeks we’ll be making a new dashboard available to help you manage, debug and monitor all of your Apps Script projects from one place.

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In this new dashboard—available at script.google.com—you will be able to:

  • View and search all of your projects. 
  • Monitor the health and usage of projects you care about. 
  • View details about individual projects. 
  • View a log of project executions and terminate long-running executions. 
Check out the documentation for more detail on the dashboard. If you encounter any issues, please use the feedback link in the left column of the new dashboard or file a bug.

Apps Script API 

The new Apps Script dashboard is built on top of a powerful new Apps Script API which replaces and extends the Execution API. This new Apps Script API provides a RESTful interface for developers to create, manage, deploy and execute their scripts from their preferred programming language. This gives you control to create development workflows and deployment strategies that fit your needs. With this new API, you can:
  • Create, read, update and delete script projects, source files and versions. 
  • Manage project deployments and entry points (web app, add-on, execution). 
  • Obtain project execution metrics and process data. 
  • Run script functions. 
To learn more about the new Apps Script API, check out the documentation. If you encounter any issues please ask a question on Stack Overflow or file a bug.

Apps Script Command Line Interface 

Lastly, we’re pleased to introduce the first open-source client of the Apps Script API, a command-line interface tool called clasp (Command Line Apps Script Projects). clasp allows you to access the management functionality of the Apps Script API with intuitive terminal commands and is available as an open-source project on GitHub.

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clasp allows developers to create, pull and push Apps Script projects, plus manage deployments and versions with terminal commands and shell scripts. clasp also allows you to write and maintain your Apps Script projects using the development tools of your choice including your native IDE, Git and GitHub.

To get started, try the clasp codelab. You can file issues or ask questions on the clasp project GitHub page.

We’re doubling down on powerful platforms like Apps Script. We hope these new additions help ease your development process.

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