Building a Modern Email Workflow

Google Documents and Gmail are powerful tools for creation and collaboration, but they don’t do workflow in the sense that a series of steps are tracked and completed by different people. This is where Google Script can come in and bridge the gap.

These days people are busy and on the go; they can’t be expected to hang out at their desks all day waiting for something to hit their inbox so a certain installed program can be used to enter something. Google Docs works on everything, virtually anywhere, and that is what makes it such a powerful tool. Why shouldn’t your workflow system be integrated and take advantage of Google Apps?

In this chapter, you will create a workflow builder that has a flexible nature so that it will fit many situations and can be customized on the fly by the user without any coding on their part. It will take advantage of Google Documents for file management, Gmail for notifications, and the Google Script UiApp to give users an interface. The application is robust, meaning workflows can be moved, restarted, redirected, steps added during runtime, parallel approvers, and other great workflow features.