Google Docs Magic URLs

Google Docs includes hidden features via URLs and query parameters. We have used these attributes to useful effect in creating template documents in business workflows.

An example template URL for copying one document as a template to a specific destination folder with a new title.

Create a doc from a template in a folder with a specific title. stackexchange

There is also a list of other known query parameters. stackexchange

Deep link to google calendar event lets people add themselves to the original guest list and get event updates, instead of making a cloned orphan on their personal calendar.

Google Maps also has URL savvy site

multiple pins: //@lat,long//@lat,long stackoverflow

We can imagine a wiki workflow which makes use of these features.

Wiki pages help an author create a google form from a template of that form.

Invite their community to engage with the form now customized for a particular line of inquiry.

This collects data into a google sheet behind the form.

Export the data from the google sheet into a CSV file.

Another wiki page with an html script could parse the CSV into wiki pages with radar charts to explore the data collected.

Here follows an example business workflow to which we applied these magic URLs.

The use case took placein a medium sized software business. There was a policy structured around a kind of error budget. When teams exceeded their budget they were expected to change their priorities to focus on reliability work.

Our team was asked to create an exception workflow whereby teams could make a case when circumstances on the ground challenged the intent of the more general policy.

Teams would send a message to a chat bot to initiate the exception.

The bot would reply with a customized URL for their team and @-message their manager.

The requester would follow the URL to create a google doc from the template and make their case.

Because managers were @-messaged, they could review the doc and make note of their approvals or similar.

And the directors or VPs who were monitoring the channel could grant the appropriate exceptions to process.

Because the bot leveraged these magic urls, when there were subsequent changes to the policy to reduce the toil in the exception form we did not need to update any code in the bot. All the policy-level changes were executed by editing the template documents in google docs.