How-to Guides | The Blog Pros

August 4, 2020

Extend VPC Instances with Cloud Functions, Activity Tracker with LogDNA, and Schematics

Reserving a floating IP for one or two VSIs sounds easy. But how about for tens of VSIs provisioned in your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)? Ever thought of auto-assigning a floating IP on-the-fly as and when a new VSI is provisioned in your VPC?

In this post, you will use the IBM Cloud Activity Tracker with LogDNA service to track how users and applications interact with IBM Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). You will then create a view and an alert on Activity Tracker with LogDNA filtering VSI creation logs. The logs are then passed to IBM Cloud Functions Python action as JSON. The action reserves a floating IP to the newly provisioned VSI (instance) using the instance ID in the passed JSON.

October 21, 2019

How to Use Google Sheets as an Amazon Price Tracker

The prices of products listed on various Amazon shopping websites may vary every day and a simple Google Spreadsheet can help you monitor these price fluctuations via email. Just add the Amazon items in a spreadsheet and you’ll automatically get email alerts when their prices change on Amazon. You’ll thus never miss the deal again.

Track Amazon Prices with Google Sheets

The Amazon Price Tracker is easy to configure. All you have to do is add the links (URLs) of Amazon product pages inside a Google Spreadsheet. You can add monitor products across all Amazon.* websites. Here are the steps involved:

Step 1: Generate Amazon Access Keys

Open the Amazon Associates website and sign-in with your Amazon account. Next, click the Tools menu, choose Product Advertising API from the dropdown (link) and choose Manage Your Credentials under the Add Credentials section. Amazon will create an Access Key ID and a Secret Key that you’ll need in the next step.

Step 2: Copy the Google Spreadsheet

Click here to copy the Price Tracker Google Sheet in your Google Account. DO NOT change the layout of the Google Sheet as it may break the tracker.

Now all you have to do is enter Amazon product URLs in column A of the Google Sheet, one per line. For instance, here’s the Amazon URL for iPad

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B07K344J3N/tajmahal020-20/

The URL contains the 10 digit ASIN code which is used by the Google Sheet to identify the specific Amazon product you are looking to monitor for price fluctuations.

In addition to prices, the Google Sheet lists several other useful attributes of Amazon Products including merchant’s name, sales rank, overall savings, Prime eligibility and whether the product qualifies for free shipping.

Step 3: Set Price Thresholds (optional)

With the Price Tracker, you can also set price thresholds for specific products and get automatic email alerts when the target price is reached. For instance, you can choose to receive alerts when the iPad price drops by 20% of the initial value. Or you can set a target price (alert when iPad drops to $399) and get automatic alerts when the price drops on Amazon.

To specify a threshold for any product, go to column B of the product row and enter the amount or percentage values as shown in the screenshot above.

Step 4: Configure Price Tracker inside Google Sheet

Inside the Google Sheets, go to the Amazon Price Tracker menu (near the Help menu) and choose Configure. You may have to authorize the Pricer Tracker script once to connect to Amazon API and send email alerts.

Next enter your access keys, your email address and the time when you wish to receive the email alerts. Click Save to initialize the Amazon Price Tracker.

That’s it. You’ll receive a daily email digest with the price fluctuations as shown below.

Monitor Amazon Products for Price Drops

Amazon Price Tracker can monitor prices of all products (including Kindle ebooks) listed on Amazon.com and the country-specific websites including amazon.fr, amazon.de, amazon.es, amazon.ca, amazon.it, amazon.in, amazon.co.jp and amazon.co.uk.

Also, you can add more Amazon URLs, or delete existing products, from the Google sheet and the script will automatically pick the changes in the next run. And if you ever wish to stop receiving those email alerts, just choose the Stop Tracking option from the Price Tracker menu in the same Google sheet.

The tracker is written in Google Scripts and uses Amazon’s Product Advertising API to fetch the latest prices at fixed intervals. The Price Tracker is completely free but if you chose to upgrade to premium, you get technical support and get to use your own Amazon Associate tags.

The post How to Use Google Sheets as an Amazon Price Tracker appeared first on Digital Inspiration.

July 11, 2019

How to Email Spreadsheets Automatically on a Recurring Schedule

Introducing Email Spreadsheets, a Google Sheets add-on that lets you automate the reporting of spreadsheet data and dashboards by email. If you are an office worker who has been emailing spreadsheets to colleagues manually, this add-on will save you a ton of time. And because it runs on the Google Cloud, your spreadsheet reports will be delivered even while you are offline or on vacation.

With Email Spreadsheets, you can schedule reports and it will automatically send them by email on a recurring schedule. You can email entire workbooks, specific sheets inside a workbook or even range of cells. Watch the video tutorial to get started.

Email Google Sheets Automatically

Go to the Google add-on store and install Email Google Sheets. Next, open any Google Spreadsheet in your Google Drive, go to the Add-ons menu inside the sheet, choose Email Spreadsheets from the dropdown and then choose Rules to create your first scheduled email report.

You are presented with a 3-step wizard to help the email schedule of your spreadsheet report.

Step 1: Select Sheet Export Options

Expand the “Select Sheets” dropdown and select one or more sheets that you would like to include in the email. Each sheet is attached as a separate file in the email but you can choose the “Merge all sheets” option to create a single file from all sheets in the workbook.
Select the export format. You can choose between PDF, Excel (xlsx), OpenDocument or CSV formats. The “Email without Attachment” option can be used to embed a specific range of cells in the email body without including any sheet as an attachment.
If you have selected PDF as the export format in step 2, you are presented with a few more options. For instance, you can change the paper orientation (Portrait or Landscape), the paper size or alter the print margins to fit more content on a page. You can choose to show gridlines, notes, sheet names and page numbers in the exported file.
(optional) The Cell Range option lets you specify a range in A1 notation and only that range will be exported in the PDF file.

Tip: Use the Preview button to test how your exported files would be like with the various export options.

Step 2: Write the Email Template

Email Template with Dynamic Sheet Cell Values

Next, we create an email template that will be sent with your reports. You can specify one or email recipients in the TO, CC, or BCC fields. Multiple email addresses should be separated by a comma.

You can also specify dynamic email recipients based on cell values in the spreadsheet. For instance, if the email address of the recipient is specified in cell B2 of a sheet titled “Employee Shifts”, you can put {{Employee Shifts!B2}} in the To field, and the add-on will pull the dynamic value from the cell at the time of sending the email report.

These dynamic cell values enclosed inside double curly braces can be used inside any of the email fields including subject, email body, and the sender’s name.

The email body can include dynamic cell values as well as ranges that make it easy of you to send portions of the spreadsheet without sharing the full workbook. For instance, you can write {{Employee Wages!B2:F9}} to include only the specific range (B2:F9) from the Wages sheet. Internally, the add-on converts the range to an HTML table, retaining all the display formatting with CSS, and embed it into the email.

You can also include standard HTML tags like H1, IMG, A, B, EM and more to include images and rich formatting in your emails.

Tip: Use the Test Email button to send an email with the exported files before setting up the schedule.

C: Create the Email Schedule

Email Sheets Daily, Hourly, Weekly or Monthly

The Google Sheets add-on includes a scheduler to help you set up recurring schedules visually. You can send email hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or even on a yearly recurring basis.

It is also possible to setup advanced schedules like:

Send a recurring email on the last working day of the month.
Send email reports every alternate day and end the reporting after 15 days.
Set up a quarterly schedule and send email reports on the first Monday of the quarter.

That’s it. After specifying the schedule, hit the Save button and your email report will be scheduled.

If you would like to edit your current email report or schedule a new report, go the add ons menu again, choose Email Spreadsheets and Rules.

Download Email Sheets

Email Google Sheets – How it works?

The add-on is written in Google Apps Script. It uses the Google Sheets API to convert sheets to PDF files and uses the Gmail API for sending the converted files as attachments.

The post How to Email Spreadsheets Automatically on a Recurring Schedule appeared first on Digital Inspiration.

April 21, 2019

Google Apps Script for Developers

Google Apps Script makes it is easy for you to integrate data and functionality from Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, YouTube, and most other Google APIs. Apps Script is JavaScript under the hood so you don’t have to learn a new language and you don’t have to manage any servers since all your code runs on the Google Cloud, not your browser.

In this video tutorial, you’ll learn how to develop Google Apps Script projects locally on your computer inside Visual Studio Code. You can write your code in modern JavaScript, neatly organized in modules, and the build environment will use Babel and Webpack to transform your code into a version of JavaScript that is compatible with Apps Script.

Modern Development with Google Apps Script

There are quite a few advantages with having a local development environment vis-a-vis writing code in the Apps Script Cloud IDE.

You can write code with ES6 Classes, Arrow Functions, Modules, Destructing and use all the other modern JavaScript features.
The development experience inside VS Code is unmatched and tools like ESLint and Prettier make it easier for you to catch errors early in the development.
The build and deployment process can be completely automated with npm scripts and CLASP, Google’s command line utility for Apps Script.
VS Code has built-in support for Git and integrates with source control providers like Github and Gitlab. It is therefore easier to track changes and restore previous versions of the code.
You can quickly integrate JavaScript libraries like LoDash, Moment, Underscore and any of the NPM packages into your code.
You can use modern frameworks like React, Vue.js and Angular to build the HTML frontend that connects to the backend with the Google Script Client API.

Getting Started with the Apps Script Starter

The Starter kit is a boilerplate for quickly getting started with local Apps Script development locally inside VS Code. Open your terminal and run the following commands:

1. Clone the Github repository to a local folder

git clone https://github.com/labnol/apps-script-start my-project

2. Switch to the project folder

cd my-project

3. Install all the project dependencies and utilities

npm install

4. Connect CLASP to your Google account

npx clasp login

5. Create a new Google Apps Script project in your Google Drive with CLASP

npx clasp create "My Project" --rootDir ./dist

This command will create a new .clasp.json file in your project folder that links the local folder with your Apps Script project. During build, Webpack will bundle all your code in a single JavaScript file and add it to the ./dist folder that Clasp will push to your Apps Script project.

Next, open the current project folder inside VS Code with the code . command. It includes some sample code but we will start with a blank folder so delete everything that’s inside the src folder.

Inside the src folder, create a new file – email.js – and write a simple arrow function that prints a list of all the email addresses connected to your Gmail account.

Next, create an index.js file (entry point) in the src folder, import the email function that you’ve created inside the email.js file and add it to the global object. This is a requirement of the Webpack plugin for Google Apps Script.

You can also add a function expression to the global object directly, like doGet in the example below.

Now that your JavaScript code is ready, open the appsscript.json file in your project folder and modify the oAuthScopes property to only include the scopes that are required by your project.

Next, jump to the command line terminal and run the deploy command to push your code to the Apps Script project.

npm run deploy

After the deployment is complete, open the associated script in the browser with the CLASP open command.

npx clasp open

Inside the Apps Script Editor, go to the Run menu and choose the getEmailAddress function from the list. Open the logs and you should see your email addresses in the window.

Then go to the Publish menu, choose Deploy as web app and open the URL in a new browser tab to check the program output. That’s how easy it is to build projects with the Google Apps Script starter kit.

Using Git with Google Apps Script

Create a new repository in Github and make a note of the URL of the new repository. Next, open the terminal and run the following commands to push your Apps Script project to Github.

Also see: Most Useful Google Apps Scripts

The same approach is used by Digital Inspiration for building popular Google add-ons including Gmail Mail Merge, Google Forms Notifications and Document Studio.

The post Google Apps Script for Developers appeared first on Digital Inspiration.

March 27, 2019

Docker How-to: Custom Authentication to A Private Docker Registry With NGINX, Lua, and AWS ECR

Background

Our engineering team developed a Docker Container for our application, Kloudless Enterprise, to simplify cluster using industry standard tools like Docker Swarm or Kubernetes.

However, our customers found downloading the container from our web portal was somewhat inconvenient. Users previously had to download the archived image and manually load it into their Docker daemon to use it. There also wasn’t a way to check which images were available without visiting the portal through a browser. To improve the experience, we decided to provide a private Docker Registry that would allow our users to not only pull images, but also query tags and take advantage of other useful features that the Docker Registry provides.

March 13, 2019

How to Sell Digital Products Online with Google Drive and PayPal

The web has made it incredibly easy for anyone to sell digital products directly to customers through websites, social media, and email newsletters. You can sell PDF ebooks, MP3 music, photos, software apps, gift cards, license keys, coupon codes, website templates, fonts, graphics, video courses, and many more downloadable files.

While there are quite a few e-commerce platforms that help you sell digital products – Gumroad, E-junkie, Paddle, FastSpring, Shopify, Instamojo and WooCommerce, to name a few, here’s a do-it-yourself solution that will help you build your own digital store in under 5 minutes using PayPal and your Google account.

How the workflow works?

Before we get into the implementation, here’s a big-picture view of how the payment and digital delivery workflow works.

Embed the “Buy Now” buttons into your website or blog. Buyers can pay with all major credit cards using 1-step checkout.
Buyer clicks the button, enters the card details and completes the payment. The customer stays on your site and isn’t redirected anywhere to complete the purchase.
The order is delivered to the customer in a personalized email message. You can also attach a tax invoice in the confirmation emails.

You can head over to the live demo page and experience the 1-step checkout experience on your desktop or mobile phone.

Sell Digital Downloads with PayPal and Google Drive

The workflow uses Google Drive for securely hosting files, PayPal for processing payments, Google Sheets for generating professional PDF invoices and Gmail for delivering the order to the buyer as file attachments.

There are no limitations on the size of files or the number of products that you can sell. There are no bandwidth or storage restrictions. There’s no transaction fee except for the payment processing fees that are charged by PayPal and Stripe.

Get Started Selling Digital Goods

Here’s a step-by-step video tutorial that explains how you can easily sell digital products with PayPal and Google Drive.

Step 1: Create a PayPal App

Go to developer.paypal.com and sign-in with your PayPal account. If you don’t have one, sign-up here for a new Business account.

Inside your PayPal dashboard, go to My Apps & Credentials > Rest API Apps and create a new app. You can give your app any name as it is for internal use only. PayPal will now create client credentials for testing and live transactions that we’ll need in the next step.

Step 2: Create a PayPal Webhook

When a buyer completes the purchase and makes the payment, PayPal will send your app a notification by calling a specific URL and this is known as a webhook.

To create a webhook, go to digitalgoods.dev/copy and copy the Google Sheet to your Google Drive. Inside the sheet, go to Tools > Script Editor, the choose Publish > Deploy As Web App and click the Update button to create your PayPal webhook. Copy the URL to the clipboard.

You will have to authorize the script once since it has to do all the operation – send emails, attach Drive files, generate PDF invoices – on your behalf.

Step 3: Configure App inside Google Sheet

Switch to the “Configuration” sheet inside the Google Spreadsheet and paste the webhook URL inside the “webhook” field. Next, copy-paste the Client ID and Secret generated in step 1 inside the corresponding fields of the Google Sheet.

There are few other mandatory fields in the sheet. Choose your default currency, the shipping preference (whether you want to capture the address on the buyer), specify your brand name and the soft descriptor (this will show in the credit card statement of the buyer).

Go to the Digital Goods menu in the sheet (it is near the Help menu) and choose Test PayPal Configuration to verify the PayPal-Google Sheets connection.

Step 4: Add your Digital Products

Switch to the “Items” sheet and enter the default tax rate in the cell E1. Next, add one or more products in the sheet. You only need to specify the price of the item in column D, the Tax and Total Amount is automatically calculated based on the tax rate set in E1.

To attach files to your digital product, highlight the Files column, then go to the Digital Goods menu and choose Attach Drive Files. It opens the Google File picker and you can select one or more files from your Google Drive that will be sent to the buyer after they purchase the corresponding product.

Step 4: Create the Tax Invoice Template

Switch to the “Invoice” sheet and customize the invoice template. You can use formulas, add your logos, apply styles to match your brand and the template would be converted to a PDF file and sent as a file attachment in the order confirmation emails.

The invoice template can include placemarkers, similar to the ones you have used inside Document Studio. For instance, the {{Name}} variable will be replaced with the full name of the customer as found in the PayPal order. The {{Email}} variable is replaced with the buyer’s email address while the {{Invoice Id}} adds a unique invoice number to your invoice.

Step 5: Create the Order Confirmation Email

Switch to the “Email” sheet and create the HTML template that will be sent to customers after they complete the payment. The email will automatically include the files and invoice as attachments but you can customize the email message and subject.

The first row in the sheet is the subject and everything else will go in the message body. The emails, like Mail Merge, can be personalized and you can also use HTML tags to add images, links and rich content in the emails.

Step 6: Test your PayPal buttons

Now that you have added the products to the Google Sheet, it is time to test the integration in sandbox mode before you embed the buttons on your live website.

Go back to your PayPal dashboard, and choose Credit Card Generator in the right sidebar. Here you can generate random credit card numbers with expiration date and CVV for testing your buttons in sandbox mode.

Inside the Google Sheet, choose Digital Tools > Embed PayPal Buttons to generate the HTML embed code for your digital products. The screen offers embed codes in both the live mode and the sandbox mode.

Click the Try button next to the Sandbox mode and you’ll be able to test the buttons right inside the Google Sheet. Click the credit card icon, enter the mock credit card number and click “Pay Now” to complete the test transaction.

PayPal invokes the Webhook and it triggers the order workflow. Switch to the “Logs” sheet and you’ll soon find a new entry for the transaction that you just completed. Open your Gmail Sent items folder and you’ll find a copy othe f email that was sent the buyer’s email.

If your integration is working as expected, go to the Embed PayPal menu in the sheet and this time copy the embed code for the “Live” mode and paste it in your website. Your product is now live and anyone in the world can buy your product with a single-step checkout.

Here’s a sample email that will go out to customers after the purchase.

All the incoming orders can be tracked in real-time inside the “Sales” tab of the Google Sheet. The sheet includes the customer’s name, email address, the order summary and the buyer’s postal address. The address is only available if you have set the shipping preference in the configuration sheet to “GET_FROM_FILE”.

You can directly run Mail Merge with Gmail inside this sheet to easily send product updates to existing customers. If you have been using PayPal prior to switching to Digital Goods, put all the PayPal emails under a new Gmail label, extract the email addresses inside the sheet and use that list for your merge.

How to Sell Unique License Keys & Codes

In some businesses, you may want to send unique codes to the customer. These may include license numbers to unlock software apps (like we do at Digital Inspiration), passwords to access streaming video courses, discount coupons, gift cards, event registration numbers and more.

This is easy with Digital Goods. Open the “Codes” sheet in the spreadsheet and the pregenerated list of codes in one of the columns. Give this column a title as shown in the screenshot above. Next, include the {{column title}} in your email mesage and a unique code will be added in place of the marker.

Internally, the app looks at the last row of the Sale sheet (the current order), fetches the codes from that same row in the Codes sheet and adds them to your email / invoice.

Troubleshooting Tips

The video tutorial explains the entire workflow in great detail but if you are still facing any issues, here are some tips:

Go to the configuration sheet and set “yes” for the debug setting. Next, do a test transaction inside sandbox mode and check the Logs sheet for any errors.
Go the Digital Goods menu and run Test Configuration again to ensure that your PayPal sandbox and live credentials are correct.
PayPal, in rare cases, may delay the delivery of webhooks. Go to the PayPal dashboard and choose Webhooks (link) to get a list of recently-processed webhook events and their status. You can open a case at paypal-techsupport.com for help.
Make sure that you have not renamed or deleted any of the original sheets in your copied Google Spreadsheet.
Open your Chrome Dev Tools, switch to the network tab and make sure that your adblockers are not blocking the PayPal script.

If you are unable to resolve the issue, write to me at amit@labnol.org or tweet @labnol.

The post How to Sell Digital Products Online with Google Drive and PayPal appeared first on Digital Inspiration.

January 26, 2019

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.

Screenshot 2019-01-26 at 11.41.25 AM.png

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 {{name}} – 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 – \\{{Country}}\\{{City}} – 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 {{All Answers}} 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 {{question title}} 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.

January 11, 2019

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.

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.
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.
While inside the script editor, go to Publish > Deploy as Web App and click Update.
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.

January 8, 2019

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:

Click here to copy the website monitoring Google sheet into your Google Drive.
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.
Specify your website URL and the email address where you wish to be notified. You can put multiple addresses separated by commas.
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.

The post How to Monitor your Website’s Uptime with Google Sheets appeared first on Digital Inspiration.

December 3, 2018

How to Receive Push Notifications for Google Forms on your Mobile Phone

The Google Form Notifications add-on sends the form data in an email message each time a respondent submits your Google Form. The add-on can also send automated emails to form respondents as soon as they complete your Google Form.

The email notifications add-on for Google Forms can also send push notifications to your mobile phones and tablets as well. That means when respondents complete and submit your online Google Form, you’ll instantly get a real-time notification (sample) on your iPhone or Android phone.

The rich push notifications on your mobile can include answers from the Google Form as well as a link to the submitted form so you can view the form answers on your mobile device directly.

A fast response time is a key to success, especially in areas like customer service and closing sales leads, and mobile notifications will ensure that your important form entries are never lost in the daily deluge of emails.

Setup Mobile Notifications for Google Forms

It takes a few easy steps (video tutorial) to get up and running.

Install the Email Notifications for Google Forms from the Google add-on store.
Install the IFTTT mobile app on your Android or iPhone. It will work on the iPad and Android tablets as well.

Next, we need to create a connection between our Google Form and the IFTTT app so that mobile notifications are triggered on the mobile phone immediately after the form is submitted.

1. Configure IFTTT

Open ifttt.com on your desktop and create a new applet. Choose the ~~Maker~~ Webhooks service for if-this condition and select the “Receive a web request” trigger. Set the Event name as the name of your Google Form.

For if-this-then-that action, choose Notifications as the service and choose either “Send a notification from IFTTT app” or “Send a rich notification”. Choose the latter if you want to include the form response URL in the notification that can directly view on the mobile phone.

On the next screen, put {{Value 1}} in the Title field, {{Value 2}} for Message and {{Value 3}} for Link URL. Click the “Create Action” button and then press “Finish” (this is important) to make your IFTTT applet live.

2. Configure Google Forms

Open any Google Form, go to the Add-ons menu, choose Email Notifications and then select Mobile Notifications. Enter the Event name, the IFTTT key, and the notification text. You can put any {{form field name}} in the text and these will be replaced with actual values filled by the user.

That’s it. Click the Test button to test the connection between the form and your mobile phone. If it works, click Save to enable mobile notifications.

If you have multiple Google Forms, you need to create separate IFTTT applets for each form and the event name should be unique for each applet.

Internally, when someone submits your form, the Google Addon triggers and sends a web request to the IFTTT service which in turn pushes the notification to your mobile device.

Troubleshooting Mobile Notifications

Ensure that your mobile is connected to the Internet.
The event name in the applet should match the event name in the form configuration.
You are logged into the IFTTT app on your mobile phone.
Check the activity log to ensure that notifications are getting sent.

The post How to Receive Push Notifications for Google Forms on your Mobile Phone appeared first on Digital Inspiration.

November 12, 2018

The 101 Most Useful Websites on the Internet

Here are the most useful websites on the Internet that will make you smarter, increase productivity and help you learn new skills. These incredibly useful websites solve at least one problem really well. And they all have cool URLs that are easy to memorize thus saving you a trip to Google.

The Most Useful Websites and Web Apps

archive.is — take a snapshot of any web page and it will be exist forever even if the original page is gone.
autodraw.com — create freehand doodles and watch them magically transform into beautiful drawings powered by maching learning.
fast.com — check the current speed of your Internet connection.
slides.com — create pixel-perfect slide decks and broadcast your presentations to an audience of any size from anywhere.
screenshot.guru — take high-resolution screenshots of web pages on mobile and desktops.
dictation.io – accurate and quick voice recognition in your browser itself.
reverse.photos — upload an image and find similar pictures on the web.
copychar.cc – copy special characters and emojis that aren’t on your keyboard.
codeacademy.com – the best place to learn coding online.
noisli.com — ambient noises to help you improve focus and boost productivity.
iconfinder.com – millions of icons for all kinds of projects. Also try icons8.com and flaticon.com.
jotti.org – scan any suspicious file or email attachment for viruses.
wolframalpha.com – gets answers directly without searching – see more wolfram tips.
flightstats.com – track flight status at airports worldwide.
unsplash.com – the best place to download images absolutely free.
videos.pexels.com — an online library of free HD videos you can use everywhere. Also see videvo.net.

Also see: The Best Android Apps

everytimezone.com – a less confusing view of the world time zones.
e.ggtimer.com – a simple online timer for your daily needs.
random.org – pick random numbers, flip coins, and more.
earn.com — replace your email with a mailbox that pays when you reply to someone’s email.
myfonts.com/WhatTheFont – upload an image of any text and quickly determine the font family.
fonts.google.com – the best collection of open source fonts that you can use anywhere without restrictions.
fontstruct.com — draw and build your own fonts and use them in any application.
calligraphr.com — transform your handwriting into a real font.
regex.info – find data hidden in your photographs – see more EXIF tools.
youtube.com/webcam — broadcast yourself live over the Internet without any complicated setup.
remotedesktop.google.com — access other computers or allow others to remote access your computer over the Internet.
homestyler.com – design from scratch or re-model your home in 3D.
pdfescape.com – lets you quickly edit PDF in the browser without Acrobat.
draw.io – create diagrams, wireframe and flowcharts in the browser.
web.skype.com — make voice and video calls in your browser with Skype.
onlineocr.net – recognize text from scanned PDFs – see other OCR tools.
wetransfer.com – for sharing really big files online.
file.pizza — peer to peer file transfer over WebRTC without any middleman.
snapdrop.com — like Apple AirDrop but for the web. Share files directly between devices in the same network without having to upload them to any server first.
hundredzeros.com – the site lets you download free Kindle books.
app.grammarly.com — check your writing for spelling, style, andgrammatical errors.
noteflight.com – print music sheets, write your own music online ( review).
translate.google.com – translate web pages, PDFs and Office documents.
kleki.com – create paintings and sketches with a wide variety of brushes.
similarsites.com – discover new sites that are similar to what you like already.
bubbl.us – create mind-maps, brainstorm ideas in the browser.
color.adobe.com – get color ideas, also extract colors from photographs.
canva.com — make beautiful graphics, presentations, resumes and more with readymade template designs.
lmgtfy.com – when your friends are too lazy to use Google on their own.
midomi.com – when you need to find the name of a song.
history.google.com — see all your past Google searches, also among most important Google URLs
faxzero.com – send an online fax for free – see more fax services.
tinychat.com – setup your own private chat room in micro-seconds.
privnote.com – create text notes that will self-destruct after being read.
domains.google.com – quickly search domain names for your next big idea!
squoosh.app – compress images on the fly. Site works offline as well.
downforeveryoneorjustme.com – find if your favorite website is offline or not?
gtmetrix.com – the perfect tool for measuring your site performance online.
builtwith.com — find the web hosting company, email provider and everything else about a website.
urbandictionary.com – find definitions of slangs and informal words.

Also see: The Best Mac Apps and Utilities

seatguru.com – consult this site before choosing a seat for your next flight.
flightstats.com – Track flight status at airports worldwide.
mymaps.google.com – create custom Google Maps with scribbles, pins and custom shapes.
snopes.com – find if that email offer you received is real or just another scam.
typingweb.com – master touch-typing with these practice sessions.
todo.microsoft.com — a beautiful todo app and task manager. Also see Trello.
minutes.io – quickly capture effective notes during meetings.
talltweets.com — Turn Google Slides in animated GIF presentations.
ifttt.com – create a connection between all your online accounts.
namechk.com — search for your desired username across hundreds of social networks and domain names.
gist.github.com — create anonymous and secret text notes and much more.
flipanim.com — create flipbook animations, includes an onion skin tool to let you see the previous frame as you draw the next one.
powtoon.com — create engaging whiteboard videos and presentations with your own voiceovers. Also see videoscribe.co.
clyp.it — Record your own voice or upload an audio file without creating any account. Also see soundcloud.com.
carrd.co — build one-page fully responsive websites that look good on every screen.
spark.adobe.com — make stunning video presentations with voice narration and wow everyone.
anchor.fm — the easiest way to record a podcast that you can distribute on iTunes without have to pay for hosting.
duolingo.com — learn to speak Chinese, French, Spanish or any other language of your choice.
webmakerapp.com — an offline playground for building web projects in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
pixton.com — create your own comic strips with your own characters and move them into any pose.
gravit.io — a full-featured vector drawing tool that works everywhere.
vectr.com — create vector graphics and export them as SVG or PNG files.
twitterbots — create your own Twitter bots that can auto-reply, DM, follow people and more.
headspace.com — learn the art of meditation and reduct stress, focus more and even sleep better.
class-central.com — a directory of free online courses offered by universities worldwide.
googleartproject.com — discover museums, famous paintings and art treasure from all around the world.
instructables.com — step-by-step guides on how to build anything and everything.
flowgram.com — make data-driven graphics, charts and infographics. Also see adioma.com and eas.ly.
marvelapp.com — create interactive wireframes and product mockups.
slide.ly — make marketing videos and branded stories for Instagram, Facebook and YouTube trailers. Also see animoto.com and biteable.com.
gohighbrow.com — Take bite-sized courses on a variety of topics, chapters are delivered by email every monning.
htmlmail.pro – send rich-text emails with gmail mail merge.
wirecutter.com — whether you need a vacuum cleaner or an SD card, this is the best product recommendation website on the Internet.
camelcamelcamel.com — Create Amazon price watches and get email alerts when the prices drop.
mockaroo.com — download mock data to fill the rows in your Excel spreadsheet.
asciiflow.com — a WYSIWYG editor to draw ASCII diagrams that you can embed in emails and tweets.

Also see: The Best Add-ons for Gmail, Docs and Sheets

buffer.com — the easily way to post and schedule updates on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook.
10minutemail.com — create disposable email addresses for putting inside sign-up forms.
whereami — find the postal address of your current location on Google maps.
sway.com — create and share interactive reports, newsletters, presentations, and for storytelling.

Also see: The Best Websites to Learn Coding

apify.com — the perfect web scraping tool that lets you extract data from nearly any website.
thunkable.com — build your own apps for Android and iOS by dragging blocks instead of writing code. Also see: glitch.com.
zerodollarmovies.com — a huge collection of free movies curated from YouTube.
upwork.com — find freelancers and subject experts to work on any kind of project.
duckduckgo.com – a clean alternative to google search that doesn’t track you on the Internet.

Know any useful website that is missing in the list? Please let me know via @twitter or send an email.

The post The 101 Most Useful Websites on the Internet appeared first on Digital Inspiration.

November 2, 2018

The Most Awesome Online Teachers for Learning Web Development

For the past few months, I have been on a learning spree looking to enhance my existing coding skills and also learn new programming languages and frameworks. In this process, I have watched a countless number of video tutorials and online courses that pertain to programming and, specifically, web development.

In my quest to become a better developer, I’ve come across several awesome “teachers” who aren’t just excellent programmers but awesome educators and have the art of explaining complex and difficult concepts.

Learn Modern Web Programming with the Best Online Teachers

This is an attempt to highlight the best instructors on the Internet for JavaScript, React, Redux, Node.js, Firebase (database and storage), Docker, Google Golang, Typescript, Flutter (for mobile app development), Dart, Git, Webpack and Parcel bundler.

I’ve taken courses by every single instructor mentioned here (PDF) and recommend them highly.

Language / Platform	Teacher / Course
React.js	Andrew Mead, Maximilian Schwarzmüller, Stephen Grider, Ryan Florence, Scott Tolinski, Elijah Manor, Brian Holt, Dave Ceddia, Kirupa Chinnathambi
Advanced JavaScript / ES6 / ES2017	Anthony Alicea, Wes Bos, Mark Zamoyta, Tyler McGinnis, Mosh Hamedani, Kent C. Dodds, Kyle Simpson, Kyle Robinson Young, Brandon Morelli, Cody Seibert
Redux	Dan Abramov, Shaun Pelling, Bucky Roberts, Cory House
Dart & Flutter	Mary Xia & Matt Sullivan, Stephen Grider, Maximilian Schwarzmüller, Filip & Emily Fortuna
Docker / Kubernetes	Jake Wright, Stephen Grider, James Lee
Webpack / Parcel web bundler	Andrew Mead, Lawrence Whiteside, Sean Larkin, Petr Tichy, Brad Traversy, Max Schwarzmüller
Node.js	Maximilian Schwarzmüller, Stephen Grider, Andrew Mead, Azat Mardan, Anthony Alicea, Samer Buna
Git & Github	Trevor Miller, Alex Garret-Smith, Tom Preson-Werner, Daniel Shiffman
Go Language	Todd McLeod, Stephen Grider, Derek Banas, Jon Calhoun, Harrison Kinsley
TypeScript	Todd Motto, John Lidquist, Basarat Ali Syed, Marius Schulz
Firebase / Firestore	David East, Doug Stevenson, Shaun Pelling, Todd Kerpelman, Steve Kinney
Google Chrome Dev Tools	Paul Irish, Surma, Umar Hansa, Jon Kuperman
GraphQL	Andrew Mead, Stephen Grider

Also see: Learn How to Code Online

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October 29, 2018

How to Automatically Create PDFs with Google Form Responses

Google Forms are the best tool for creating online polls, surveys, quizzes, and questionnaires. The form submissions are automatically stored in Google Spreadsheets, making it easier for you to analyse the submissions, and your forms can receive an unlimited number of responses.

When a user submits your Google Form, a row is added to the destination Google Sheet with all the answers. The tutorial explains how you can save your Google Form responses in a customized PDF file in Google Drive and have it emailed automatically to one or more recipients via Gmail.

For this example, we are building an event registration form with Google Forms. The attendees fill the form, select the session(s) they wish to attend and an email confirmation is sent to them instantly. A PDF document is attached and it contains the form answers and also a dynamic QR Code that can be scanned at the event venue.

Create PDFs with Google Forms – DEMO

Before we get into the implementation details, please try the live workflow so you have a better idea of what we are building.

First, fill-in this Google Form and submit. Your form response is saved in this Google Sheet and, within a few seconds, you’ll receive a personalized email with a PDF attachment. It contains a QR code and a unique registration ID that is generated automatically with the =QRCODE() formula.

Internally, the workflow is using this Google Document to merge the Google Forms data into a PDF file. We picked PDF for this example but you can generate documents in any format including Word documents, Excel Spreadsheets, PowerPoint Slides, ePub and more.

How to Create PDF Documents with Google Form Responses

To get started, create a new Google Form and choose a destination Google Spreadsheet where the responses would get saved.

Next, create a template in either Google Docs, Google Slides or Google Sheets. In your template, the variable fields should be enclosed inside double curly braces and the field name should exactly match the question title in your Google Form.

For example, if your Google Form question is “Full Name”, the marker in your document template would be {{Full Name}} and it will be automatically replaced with the answer submitted by the form submitter.

Install Document Studio

Next, install Document Studio for Google Sheets and authorize the add-on. Now open the Google Spreadsheet that is storing your Google Form responses, go to the Add-ons menu, choose Document Studio and open the sidebar to build the workflow.

First, expand the Document Merge section and choose the document template from Google Drive that you have created in the previous step. Choose a file name of the exported file – it can be a fixed name – like event.pdf – or a dynamic name like {{full name}}.pdf where the file name is customized based on file answers.

Next, expand the Mail Merge section in Document Studio’s sidebar, turn on the “Send Emails” option and create an email template using the built-in WYSIWYG editor.

You can customize the template by adding variable placeholders, like {{First Name}}, in the email subject and message body for personalized emails. Choose the field where you asking for the submitter’s email address to send them an email when they submit the form. You can add more emails (comma-separated) in the “Email Specific People” to notify more people when forms are submitted.

If you would like to add markers to the merged document that aren’t present in the Google Form, you can use the help of Google Sheets array formulas.

For instance, if your Google Form question is Full Name, you can add a new column in the Google Sheet for First Name and use the following formula to automatically get the first name from Google Form submissions that can be used in the email and document template.

Also see: How to Send Personalized Emails with Gmail

Finally, expand the “Finish and Merge” section and check the option Merge on Form Submit. Click Save to turn the workflow and submit a test entry in your Google Form.

You should find a personalized email with the merged document as a PDF attachment in your Gmail sent items. A copy of the PDF file is saved in your Google Drive that you can use to automatically print the Google Form response via Google Cloud Print.

If you are stuck, please watch the video tutorial (download) for a visual walkthrough.

The post How to Automatically Create PDFs with Google Form Responses appeared first on Digital Inspiration.

September 18, 2018

The Best Places to Download HTML Templates for your Website

Are you looking for responsive, beautiful and professional looking HTML templates for your next website but don’t have the budget? Well, here are a couple of free resources on the Internet where you can regularly find good templates for use in your web projects without restrictions.

Dribble is a popular community of designers for them to showcase their work online. In addition to posting screenshots of their work, designers also upload the HTML / CSS version of their projects for anyone to use. You should bookmark the freebie and the freebies tag on Dribble to never miss these projects.

Creative Market is a marketplace for website templates, themes, fonts and other design assets. It is a paid store but if you join their email newsletter, they’ll send you free design stuff every week in your inbox that can be downloaded directly to your Dropbox. And they are mostly good.

HTML5 UP is created by the same developer that built Carrd, one of the most useful websites on the Internet. HTML5 UP is a treasure house of beautiful templates built sans the heavy Bootstrap or Material framework. All web templates are available in the Creative Commons license so can you can use them in any way with attribution.

Envato’s Themes Forest is a premium marketplace for website templates but if create a free account with them, you get to download all the freebies that are published on their homepage every few weeks. These are paid items that the authors have made free only during the duration of the promotion to gain visibility in the marketplace.

OnePageLove is a curated directory of single page websites and they have a dedicated section for HTML templates that are free to download.

UpLabs is another online marketplace and community where creative designers share their work. The “web” section offers a variety of HTML templates that are free for both personal and commercial use.

Manoela Ilic’s Codrops houses the most creative collection of work for web designers as well as developers. Every single project on this site, be it an image slider or a checkout page, is unlike anything you’ve seen before and the source code is up for grabs on Github.

Freebiesbug, as the name suggests, curates web freebies including fonts, PSD designs, stock photos and, of course, HTML templates. Look for the “exclusive” tag and you’ll discover HTML/CSS templates that the designers have chosen to share exclusively on this website.

And the final resource in my list that is worth adding to your bookmarks is Codepen. Chris Coyier started Codepen as a playground for writing HTML, CSS and JavaScript in the web browser but the project has evolved into a huge community of front-end developers that are putting the code in public which are free to fork and download.

PS: If you are aware of any good resource for free web templates that we missed in the above list, please let me know at amit@labnol.org – thanks!

The post The Best Places to Download HTML Templates for your Website appeared first on Digital Inspiration.

September 17, 2018

How to Delete Older Emails in Gmail Automatically

Microsoft Outlook has an interesting Auto-Sweep feature that lets you automatically deletes older email messages from specific senders after a certain period of time. You can also set up rules that mark older emails as read or you can move emails to different folders based on conditions.

Gmail offers you filters but these filters only work on new incoming emails. You can’t set up a filter in Gmail that will, say, auto-purge all old newsletters emails from your mailbox. Or a filter that will apply a different label to emails after a specific number of days and also mark them as read.

Gmail Auto Purge – Delete Old Mails Automatically

Email Studio is a new Gmail add-on that can help keep your Gmail mailbox lean and tidy with the built-in auto-purge feature. Here are some examples of rules that you can set up for your Gmail with the help of Email Studio:

Delete all emails that were received more than a month ago and are from specific senders or are in a specific folder.
Archive and “Mark as Read” all emails in the inbox folder that are more than 3 months old.
Star emails that are in the “follow up” folder and received more than 2 weeks ago.
Permanently remove all emails from the Gmail trash and the spam folder after 2 days. (Gmail will only clear your spam and trash after 30 days).
Apply the label “follow up” to all starred emails after a week or a month.

The auto-purge utility also includes an email unsubscriber to help you easily remove your email address from unwanted mailing lists and other bulk emails.

How to Enable Auto-Purging in Gmail

To get started, install the Email Studio add-on (video). Next, switch to the Gmail website and open any email message in your inbox. You’ll see the Email Studio icon in the right sidebar.

Open Email Studio, log in with your Gmail account and then choose the “Email Cleanup” tool from the list of available options. Click on “Add new rule” and set up a rule.

There are two parts – you specify a condition and then you specify an action that will be performed on messages that match your condition.

For setting conditions, you can even specify advanced Gmail search operators like newer_than or has:attachment or larger_than to exactly match the Gmail messages that you wish to archive, trash or move to another folder.

Once you have created a rule, click the Save button and Email Studio will launch in the background. It will auto-run every hour, like a cron job, and perform the specified action on email messages that match your condition. There’s no need for you to run the rules manually.

Email Studio is free for basic use but if you wish to create multiple sets of purge rules, please switch to the premium version. It includes email scheduler, forwarder and auto-responder and costs $29 per year.

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