We have a website that users login to, and can then book on to courses. These courses and the bookings are stored in our SQL database against the user's UserID. On the course page the user is able to add the course to their Outlook calendar via a simple ICS file that is generated when the user clicks on the button to add it by submitted the required data into the ICS file within the URL that calls it and then using <%=Request("CourseName")%> in the ICS file itself.
We are now looking to create a new ICS file that a user can subscribe to that will update their Outlook calendar with all of the courses they have signed up for, and will automatically update if/when a course has a change applied to it or if the user signs up to a new course then this will also automatically be added to their calendar. I can work out how to generate an ICS file that will hold all of this data using a similar setup to what I have done for the individual courses above, but I cannot work out how to create an ICS file that automatically updates with new information.
I don't know if I need to;
1. Have a hardcoded ICS file stored on the server for each individual user that is then updated as and when a change is made (I would prefer to avoid this as we have a lot of users)
2. If there is a way I can include a SQL statement within an ICS file that will then get the latest course data for the user on the fly (this is preferred, but testing this option so far has always resulted in errors)
3. Something else I have not thought of yet
Any help would be appreciated on this!
Here is the approach we are using to solve a similar problem:
Every time an admin changes an event or a user changes their subscription, we trigger an API call to do two things: (1) notify the relevant users of the changes using an auto-generated iCalendar event (.ics), and (2) update the database with the changes.
We opted to give the users and the administrators the power to trigger event-changes, rather than have a timer that checks and sends out updates, because we wanted to avoid the lag.
As to your question about auto-generating, this requires you to create an event_id, which you re-use in the .ics file, along with a METHOD:REQUEST, which notifies the user's email that you are sending a: (a) new event, or (b) change to a prior event. If you build a dynamic iCalendar script, this is possible. You must capture the "changes" and flow them through to a new .ics request.
Related
May i get some help on the below points where i am using app-script to develop a gmail add-on:
How can we refresh gmail add-on with back ground process?
=> Here is my case, I need to display card with multiple sections which is the process of hitting multiple apis to fetch data and to display the card. For this initially we will show a card with minimal information to the user once i get information from api, i need to update the basic cards with complete information.
How can we trigger a function on every mail thread open?
=> Currently it works once for a mail, here as explained above point need to refresh a card once we fetch the data. If not, user will be seeing same basic information card every time he opens the mail.
From above mentioned issues for point one we are trying to get solution where we can hit service for certain interval of time to check data availability and if data exists then fetch data and update cards, i mean to say need a setTimeout function kind of thing, unfortunately we did'nt found this in app script and We found sleep/waitLock functions in app-script, but my services may take little time to fetch data as it connects though multiple services so we cant make the user to wait until the whole process is to be completed. So that we will show a card with basic information required then after need to auto refresh the cards once we fetch the data. we tried of keeping refresh button for the user to click and fetch the updated data but here we are losing user experience, trying for auto refresh with out user interference to get updated information.
Need a process / solution where we can auto refresh the card with out user interference after the data available at our end instead of making user to wait until the process to be completed.
Earliest reply will be more helpful for us.
Thanks.
If a data status on a third-party backend changes as the result of a user interaction with your add-on UI, it is recommended that the add-on set a 'state changed' bit to true so that any existing client side cache is cleared. See the ActionResponseBuilder.setStateChanged() method description for additional details.
The card-based interface in Gmail Addons is an Apps Script Service.
You can interlink it with other Apps Script services as well as implement API calls - everything within the same Apps Script file.
Gmail Addons contents automatically update every time the user opens a different e-mail or refreshes his browser.
Within your Apps Script code you can install time-driven triggers to run the data availability check with a customized frequency.
Consider to install for your users an Auto Refresh extension if you do not want them to refresh the card themselves.
Using the app script properties service I can allow users to store some settings information. I understand that these are stored for a given user for a given script. As the admin is there anyway for me to review all the users properties?
Also does anyone know if you are allowing the script to run as you (the publisher) does the user properties store as the user accessing the script. I know that the session data is for the actual user and not the publishing user(even when running as the publishing user).
Thanks
I'd like to suggest storing the user properties in Firebase. This will give you full access to them as needed, and they load really fast for the user. My two go to docs for this are this one to get the library and this one to as for details. If this is not possible, an alternative could be to append a row to a google sheet each time the user updates their users properties. I use both of these approaches for also tracking detailed app usages.
Currently the bane of my existence is dealing with users email signatures at work, changing names, titles, departments, new users...it's all annoying. Currently I manage it with GAM and a semi templated HTML file to push changes, which works okay, but it's still a manual process. What I'm looking to do is create a small app script or app engine project that can...
detect a new or changed user
pull the fields needed to fill in their signature template
push the changes to their account
2 & 3 are no problem at all, it's #1 that I cannot find a reasonable solution to.
I had thought about using the google apps audit settings to email a specific mailbox when a new user is created, but that will only catch new users, not changes in titles and such. My only apparent option is something that runs periodically checking all the users signatures against what my script would generate and updating if needed, but that's hardly efficient and creates a potential timelapse in the waiting period meaning when people want things 'done now' (which is of course, every request), it will mean I manually trigger the job; effectively bringing me back to my original solution.
Is there any kind of user feed that contains changes available in google apps? Maybe google has a POST hook that hits a predefined URL on changes?
You can probably use push notifications for this https://developers.google.com/drive/web/push using the users.watch method https://developers.google.com/admin-sdk/directory/v1/reference/users/watch
i have a program that allow user to add data into database,but i want it look proper to admin to view the new item. Right now when user submit new data the admin can view all the data have been submitted from database but now i want the admin can alert the new data have been submitted by user. By the way i using asp.net,back end Vb.net and db is MYSQL.
There are huge variety of ways how you could implement desired feature. General algorithm is next
Commit each user data sumbission event into storage
Gather all events by timer
Render gathered facts in admin UI
To achieve this consider to use for step 1 MySQL triggers. Create additional table and save user data submission events into it.
Use scheduled asynchronous event monitoring for step 2,
I am attempting to implement the following for my school's website:
School registration is currently a hard-copy form.
They'd like applicants to fill out a PDF form online.
They then print, sign and mail it to the school.
The school want to be able to store the data entered by the applicant in the PDF so that when the signed application arrives, they can simply approve the registration for that student without reentering all the students info.
The school system is run on MS Access (if it matters which version I can find this out).
Any ideas how I can implement an import from their form to MS Access?
Thanks.
I've used a website called www.doculicious.com that does pretty much this exact thing. You can upload a PDF and have it converted into a web form. Whoever fills in the web form can download the completed PDF and print it out for signing. All the data is stored in the system and you can get it out as XML or CSV for importing into another database manually, or use the API to do that part automatically.
It depends on how automatically you want it to be. A fully automated case would be
Scan in the printed form using TWAIN
Use a Form Recognition library to align the form back to the original and find the zones with the information you want
Use OCR to get the information out of the form (probably ICR, if handwritten)
Find the original record in Access
Update the record with the new data
This isn't simple -- there are products out there that could help, but they are not cheap, and ICR is not very accurate.
I would suggest that you just do #4 and #5 in Access and give them a screen where they process an incoming form -- someone keys in the new data. That form
Lets you specify the record you want to update (like with a name or ssn)
Shows you the record with edit boxes for you to fill in with the form data
Saves it back when you are done.
This is straight-forward in Access.
The school can use a regular HTML form on their website and ask parents to submit details online. Your server-side can save the submitted details to your database and generate a unique submission token/key/code back to the parent on the web page. When the parents come to the school and mention the key, print their details on paper and ask them to sign it. You file the paper and the data is already in your database.
If the intent is to import from an electronically submitted form, I have used Adobe LifeCycle Designer to accomplish this very thing. Basically you can create an XML output of the PDF form data using an email client of the end users choice and have the data from the XML file read from the inbox into the fields of your MS Access database. Of course this solution has some serious constraints on what applications are to be used, as well as what use cases are handled, for example this solution is in a controlled environment in which all users are required to email there requests, where possibly your requirements may need to handle mailed correspondence as well.
I would add to VSU's answer by suggesting the use of Google Forms for data entry.
You just need a free account, then use Docs to create a new Form.
It's extremely easy to setup, and the submitted results en-up in a Google spreadsheet that you can download as an regular Excel file (that makes it very easy to import into Access).
You have a few ways to share the form:
Email a link to the form
Embed the form into an email
Embed the form in your web site, which is probably the best solution for you.
Once the data is in your database, you can easily create a report and a simple lookup form to find the name of the applicant and print the form.
It shouldn't take more than one hour to get start and have something functional.
You can always improve later once you've experimented with this.
The advantage of using Google forms is that it's free, it works well, and you are fairly secure since you're not linking your database directly to the Internet (and don't risk SQL injection).