The Best Web Development Apps for Google Workspace

If you’re thinking of developing your relationship with Google Workspace in 2021, you’re not alone.

Countless companies are discovering the benefits of Google for their productivity and collaboration tools. Over the last couple of years, we’ve even seen Google making drastic changes to the performance and capabilities of the Google Workspace, making modern applications increasingly more valuable to enterprises and business leaders.

One of the most attractive and constantly growing aspects of the Google Workspace that makes it particularly useful to modern companies is the fact that you can expand and improve your Google Workspace experience with applications and plugins from the Google marketplace.

Today, we’re going to be looking at 5 of the most impressive Google Workspace apps specifically for web development and app scripting teams.

Let’s get started.

1. Google Apps Script
2. Zoho Sites
3. Atlassian Cloud
4. Colaboratory
5. OverDrive

Google Apps Script

Google App Store rating: 4.4 (6,577,716 users)

Quote: Google Apps Script is an excellent, excellent product. I've taken off one star because I think the marketing management of the app has been lacking, and the wider usage of the app would bring network benefits to everybody.

Google Apps script is a tool that’s frequently overlooked by a lot of companies and web developers. However, when accessed properly, this solution can deliver a number of great benefits to you and your team. Essentially, the Apps Script gives you access to a JavaScript cloud scripting language for Google. With the Google Apps Script service, developers and web designers can learn how to implement automated workflows throughout both the Google Workspace and third-party products.

If you’ve ever thought that you could make life easier for your Google Workspace users by connecting specific processes and automating repetitive tasks, then the Google Apps Script add-on could allow you to do just that. With this feature, you can increase the power of your favorite apps on Google Workspace, including Docs, Drive, Sheets, Gmail and more. Features include:

• Create a Docs add-on that instantly translates text on your Google Docs
• Manage macros, menus and custom functions on your Google Sheets
• Manage responses from Google Forms with unique automations
• Access a comprehensive community of developers
• Code directly on the web

Not only is the Google Apps Script excellent for extending the value of your Google Workspace experience, but it’s constantly getting better too. The platform updates and improves with feedback from developers in the Google Workspace community, with new patches and operations uploaded all the time. For instance, in November 6th, 2019, Apps Script introduced extensions to the Spreadsheet service, including new class options and methods to filter charts and ranges.

If you’re looking for a feature-rich API offering that allows you to build your own applications on the web, extend your Google services and automate processes, this could be it. You can even store and share your projects within the Google Drive environment or publish your products on the web store.

Zoho Sites

Google App Store rating: 4 (825,517 users)

Quote: Simple to use and has all the things to make a decent website.

All businesses today know that they need a powerful online presence to be successful. For most companies, that presence starts with the right website. Unfortunately, designing a website can be a complex process, even if you have web developer experience. Fortunately for team leaders, Zoho Sites allows you to drag and drop your way to a compelling website design, without using any code at all.

The Zoho Sites application for Google Workspace comes with a simple drag-and-drop interface that you can use to transform ideas into a fully-functional website, just by moving specific elements to wherever you want them to be. There’s even support for mobile websites, so you can ensure that your online presence is just as compelling on a smartphone as it is on a desktop app. Features of Zoho Sites include:

• Dynamic content creator
• Automatic web page syncing
• Built-in blogging
• Online forms
• Pre-built galleries
• Drag-and-drop functionality
• Totally customizable designs
• Ad-free hosting with excellent reliability
• Ready-made themes
• Collaborative editing via Google Contacts and Google Apps
• Seamlessly integrate with your Google Workspace environment

The Zoho Sites website builder application gives you an easy and immersive way to build your website with everything from pre-built online forms to dynamic content. You can use Zoho Creator at the back-end of frequently changing web pages, and content is also stored on those databases for quicker responsivity. To update your webpage, you just modify the database and everything else syncs in real time.

Not only is Zoho Sites for Google Workspace users seamlessly synced with the Google Workspace experience, but it also integrates with other highly popular third-party apps like Google AdSense, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and many other tools too. You can use the Zoho Sites creator to design virtually any kind of website that suits your brand.

Atlassian Cloud for Google Workspace

Google App Store rating: 4 (154,615 users)

Quote: So awesome. Thanks!

If the focus of your web development issues right now is data, then Atlassian Cloud could be just the Google Google Workspace app that you need. The Atlassian cloud add-on for Gmail is specifically designed to give developers a quicker and more effective way to respond to issues, errors, and blocks in their pipelines. With Atlassian Cloud, designed by the Atlassian team, you can view information about your pipeline, pull requests, and act on issues instantly.

As a Gmail add-on, the experience that you’ll get from Atlassian Cloud is actually a little basic at first. When you receive an email that contains a link to an issue in Bitbucket or Jira Cloud, all you need to do is use the Cloud extension to find out the latest information about the problem. Features include:

• Seamless performance across all devices
• Simplify workflows with action direct from your inbox
• Add comments, assign and transition issues from Gmail
• Access up-to-date and intuitive information about work items
• Works with all email types containing links to pull requests, issues and more

The Atlassian Cloud Gmail add-on makes mission control easier by working with any kind of email that contains information about or links to requests, pipelines or issues with Bitbucket or Jira. The system displays up-to-date and rich information about your work items, including the current status of the issue, and the latest comments. You can also manage your system from any device, thanks to the add-on being an embedded part of the Gmail app.

Ultimately, if you need a Google Workspace application that’s going to streamline your workflows and improve performance for your entire developer team, the Atlassian Cloud solution could be it.

Colaboratory for Google 

Google App Store rating: 4.1 (390,071 users)

Quote: Learning but it's great!

Colaboratory is a relatively new addition to the list of Google Workspace applications available on the marketplace today. The system is essential a web IDE for python, which allows businesses to enable machine learning systems within their storage strategies on the cloud. Although the internal tool hasn’t gotten a lot of attention over the last couple of years, it could make a huge difference to brands that want to get involved with things like data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

There are very few data analysis tools on the market today that lend themselves specifically to machine learning functionality. Fortunately, Colaboratory for Google and Google Drive, combines code, descriptive text, output and other information into a single collaborative document. This means that developers can feed a more comprehensive data package to their AI and machine learning system in one go. The experience is quite similar to using something like Microsoft Azure Notebooks

Features include:

• Full integration with the Google environment
• The option to combine a host of data into a collaborative document
• Free GPU access
• Free virtual machines
• Permission and sharing controls
• Support for Python 2 and Python 3
• Import existing notebooks
• Access an extensive revisions history
• Comment on cells within your data documents

With the Colaboratory tool for Google Drive, you can access free virtual machines with between 12 GB and 5GB of hard-drive space. There’s also GPU access, support for both Python 2 and Python 3, and integration with a revisions history that makes it easier to track what your team members have been doing with your code over the last few weeks or months. You’ll even have the option to import existing notebooks from Jupyter and iPython into your document. While there’s a bit of a learning curve with this tool, it’s sure to appeal to a range of developers.

Overdrive

Google App Store rating: 4.6 (197,327 users)

Quote: Well, that was easy to set up. Up and running in 10 minutes. All good so far.

Last but not least, the Overdrive application for Google Workspace allows companies to access a smarter way of building their Google Workspace Sites. This site-builder automatically and seamlessly transforms your Drive and Google Workspace information into web pages that you can share with the world.

The OverDrive solution was designed for organisations using Google Workspace for education and business. This solution provides an easy all-access way to share information with people both inside and outside of a business. Because the system integrates with Drive, all you need to do is tell it which content you want to use, and OverDrive will create your site structure, pages, and navigation instantly. Your web page content will be the same as your Drive content, and if you need to update anything, you can do so on the Drive, and your site will automatically sync.

With a thirty-day free trial to get you started, Overdrive features solutions like:

• Mobile friendly site building
• Complete Google Drive integration
• Workflow management
• Two-way syncing
• Alternative login options
• Google Drive security
• Powerful search filters
• Drag-and-drop page building
• Multiple page design and types

The OverDrive development app for Google Workspace is a fantastic addition to the Google Workspace marketplace, and a great way to enhance your site building capabilities as a developer. Easy to set up and implement, OverDrive is recommended for use with company intranets and extranets, educational portals, virtual data rooms, sites, management meeting sites, event sites, and even digital libraries. You can use this application to create virtually any kind of web-based asset.

Today, companies around the world are relying on OverDrive to share files and useful information with clients, create public websites within Drive, and support a growing network of resellers and partners. You can even share design resources like logos and photos with customers too. Aside from integration with Google’s Google Workspace, the OverDrive experience also comes with easy integration to things like Slack, OneDrive, Google Analytics, Awesome Tablet, Facebook, Twitter and more.

Which Development Apps Will You be Using in 2021?

These days, there are countless amazing tools on the marketplace that can make your web development tasks easier and more efficient. Being able to embed your favorite applications into the productivity suite that you’re already using provides an extra layer of efficiency for today’s growing businesses. If you haven’t checked out the development section of the Google Workspace app marketplace yet, we definitely recommend exploring it as we head into 2020.

The five apps above are just some of our favourite implementations for the Google Workspace environment, but there are plenty of other alternatives out there, depending on what you need. What kind of development and web growth apps are you going to be using to extend the Google Workspace experience for your team in 2021? Let us know in the comments if we’ve missed an app that you’d like to hear more about. Alternatively, reach out to our team for advice on how to master the Google Workspace.