Never ending battle for Workspace add-on developers

[Alan Wells]

Here is a recent comment in the Issue Tracker concerning triggers in Workspace add-ons.

Quote:

Keeping my app working on this platform is a constant battle, so painful.

End Quote

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/150756612#comment118

My add-ons still run in:

"runtimeVersion": "DEPRECATED_ES5"

And I have no intention of changing to V8.

Google won't tell you that developing an add-on could end in failure because of so many unresolved bugs in Apps Script, but the reality is, that you could be wasting your time.

It's obvious that Apps Script is probably at a very low priority right now for Google. An inside connection to Google isn't needed to make this observation.

I'm hoping that Google will invest more resources into Apps Script soon, but unfortunately Google has gotten a reputation, whether deserved or not, of abandoning things and leaving you to die. 

[Andrew Apell]

Honestly, because of the way Google does things, this is a constant worry for some of us.

I even imagine them just shutting down the whole system without warning... which would spell disaster for them IMO.

Like you, I hope they pour more resources into Apps Script sooner rather than later.

The add-on ecosystem is invaluable for any product these days; it would be bad business for Google if they continued down this path.

[james cui]

I can feel the pain. For my addon, there is always "Authorization is required to perform that action." 

error which was caused by google instead of the addon. However, because of the problem, many users think

that is the problem of the addon and never returned back. I think Google really needs to improve the ecosystem 

to have more users engaged. Actually, the app script developer is helping google to build the user base. 

I really do not understand why they do not fix the high-pri bugs. 

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[CBMServices Web]

This seems to happen frequently and not just on add-ons. I think its part of Google's attempt to improve security for their users. This way if it is something they don't use regularly, they are removed from authorizations. 

I would think they may come up with a better way to do this rather than subject all of us to have to re- authorize something which we do use albeit not as frequently as Google might like.

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[Cris Fuhrman]

>  It's obvious that Apps Script is probably at a very low priority right now for Google.

Yes. My add-on in 2014 was using GAS whose engine I had read it was an internal fork of Rhino. Trying to figure out what was allowed in CAJA was very much trial and error. I was over the moon when an add-on I developed for my courses was finally accepted after waiting 6 months. My students thought it was cool a professor had a Google Add-on. Now the Google Cloud infrastructure is so much more complex. Moving my add-on to Marketplace a few years ago was a huge time suck and the documentation so complex. I almost gave up keeping it there.

Lately I saw that most of the updates in APIs for Forms, for example, have been to the REST API (as opposed to GAS, where there have been dozens of +1's in the bug-tracker). That seems annoying, yet as a developer, I can see how it makes sense to Google to ignore updating GAS. To add functionality to a REST API (assuming an object already exists), you just put the new fields in the JSON object you're manipulating. It is probably way more expensive for Google to maintain (complex) V8 APIs (which I suspect are written in C++, whose dev cost must surely be higher) with setX() and getX() methods, as opposed to parsing an extra field in JSON in a REST service. Maybe I'm off the mark here?

All companies have to be profitable, and suspect this is just Google transitioning away from the "bait" part of their plan, now that they have a user base that is heavily invested. So many "loyal" people feeling betrayed (YouTube, Google Play Music, Workspace for Education, etc.), and this is now also happening in Add-ons with GAS. We owe it to ourselves to be cautious when we invest time in to making add-ons. Nothing is stable, especially when you didn't "buy" the development kit.

[Alan Wells]

Thank you to everyone who responded with your thoughts and experiences. It seems that where Google is currently investing is in making their products competitive with Microsoft, Google Workspace vs. Microsoft 365. Google is constantly adding new features to administering security and improving collaboration in Workspace. I'd be shocked if Google gave up on Workspace and let Microsoft be a monopoly. And Apps Script is very integrated into Google products, and is critical to automating tasks, so I can't imagine Apps Script going away. If Google wants paying customers to use Cloud Platform products and API's rather than Apps Script, then it would be wise for them to provide a way for developers to deploy and secure code to the Workspace account of the customer. For example, if a developer wants to provide a better alternative to Apps Script time based triggers, by using a Cron Job on the customers Google Cloud account, that is not easy to do. At least not easy compared to installing a Google Add-on. 

[james cui]

The thing I am worried about the most is Google starting to charge app script developers one day....

That really sucks if that happens. 

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[Rupam Poddar]

I've wasted ~3 months trying to make the "create trigger from inside a trigger" work on v8 runtime. No matter what you try, you'll end up with this sweet error : "this trigger has been disabled for an unknown reason".

As a workaround, I'm currently using one recurring hourly trigger (per user). Not a perfect solution but at least it's better than nothing.