MODULE 1: IMPLEMENTING BUSINESS PROCESSES
Implementing
Business Processes
Katelyn Zaleski
Instructional Designer
Google Cloud
Welcome to the module on implementing business process automation with
AppSheet.
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Agenda
01
Business process automation
02
AppSheet automation overview
03
Automation use cases and patterns
04
Demo
05
Review
In this module, we briefly discuss what business process automation is, and
identify use cases for automating business processes within an organization.
You will learn about the automation capabilities of AppSheet and how you can
use them to automate business processes.
We will also discuss common automation use cases and patterns for you to
recognize when developing your apps, and view a demo.
Finally, at the end of this module we will review what was discussed.
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Business process
automation
What is business process automation?
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“The automation of complex business
processes and functions beyond conventional
data manipulation and record-keeping activities,
usually by using advanced technologies”
According to Gartner, business process automation, known as BPA, is defined
as the automation of complex business processes and functions beyond
conventional data manipulation and record-keeping activities, usually by using
advanced technologies.
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Product requisition
and procurement
Order fulfillment
Employee onboarding
Examples of business processes are:
●
●
●
Product requisition and procurement
Order fulfillment
Employee onboarding
In an organization, many processes such as these can be automated.
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Consider automation to:
Remove manual work
Eliminate human error
Create standardization
Mitigate workforce issues
Consider automating business processes to remove or reduce manual work
and improve process efficiency, eliminate human error,
create standardized processes that include auditing and reporting, and
support changing work cultures by mitigating risks to workforce supply and
productivity.
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Consider optimizing processes that involve:
Repetitive tasks or interactions
Multiple departments
Standardization, auditing, and reporting requirements
Time-sensitive tasks
When deciding which business process to automate in your organization,
consider these types:
●
●
●
●
Processes that involve many repetitive tasks or user interactions
Processes that involve multiple departments
Processes that must be standardized and that have auditing and
reporting requirements
Processes that are time-sensitive.
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BPA tools support the digital
transformation of an organization by
implementing, automating, and
monitoring business processes.
BPA tools support the digital transformation of an organization by
implementing, automating, and monitoring business processes.
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AppSheet
AppSheet Automation is one such tool that leverages Google AI to automate
business processes,
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and is part of Google Cloud’s AppSheet no-code development platform.
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Agenda
01
Business process automation
02
AppSheet automation overview
03
Automation use cases and patterns
04
Demo
05
Review
Let’s discuss the features and capabilities of AppSheet Automation.
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AppSheet
AppSheet Automation enables line-of-business workers who don’t have coding
skills to automate their work and business processes in the organization.
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AppSheet Automation is part of AppSheet, Google Cloud’s no-code app
development platform.
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AppSheet Automation provides:
Elimination of busy work
Time to focus on high-impact projects
Reduction of IT backlogs
With AppSheet Automation, organizations can:
●
●
●
Eliminate busy work associated with manual repetitive tasks.
Enable workers to focus on high-impact work.
Reduce IT backlogs.
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Features of AppSheet
Automation
Features of AppSheet Automation include...
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Google Workspace
Google AI
Workforce collaboration
Modularity
Seamless connectivity
●
Integration with Google Workspace
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AppSheet Automation helps business users build workflows to customize and
extend their Workspace environment, which can include Sheets, Drive, Chat,
and Gmail.
AppSheet adds more flexibility into Google Workspace by integrating with
Gmail through dynamic email support.
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Gmail integration helps streamline review and approval processes in your
AppSheet app.
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Google Workspace
Google AI
Workforce collaboration
Modularity
Seamless connectivity
●
Google AI
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AppSheet Automation uses Document AI to automatically extract unstructured
data from documents like receipts and invoices.
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Google Workspace
Google AI
Workforce collaboration
Modularity
Seamless connectivity
●
Workforce collaboration
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Third-party
data source
AppSheet
Automation
Event
AppSheet Automation enables workforce collaboration by supporting events
generated in third-party data sources.
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Data change
App trigger
Processes
AppSheet
Approvals
Bot
You can configure automation bots that detect changes in data in Google
Sheets and then trigger other processes like approvals in AppSheet.
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Google Workspace
Google AI
Workforce collaboration
Modularity
Seamless connectivity
●
Modularity
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AppSheet bot creation
Events
Processes
Tasks
Bots
With AppSheet Automation, you create bots from reusable components:
events, processes, and tasks.
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Google Workspace
Google AI
Workforce collaboration
Modularity
Seamless connectivity
●
Seamless connectivity enables you to connect your app to external data
sources without writing any code.
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Application data
External platforms
Connect directly with APIs, data sources, and webhooks to sync your
application data with external platforms.
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Key concepts
Let’s explore the key concepts of AppSheet Automation.
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Bot
Event
Process
Step
A bot defines the automation that you want AppSheet to run.
An event identifies the data change or schedule that triggers the bot.
A process describes the set of steps that are performed when the bot is
triggered.
A step is part of a process.
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Run a task
Run a data action
Step
Branch on a condition
Wait
Call a process
Return values
There are various types of steps that can:
●
●
●
●
●
●
Run a task
Run a data action
Branch the process based on a condition
Wait for a condition to be true
Call a process
Return values
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Bot
Event
Process
Step
Task
●
Task
A task defines a type of step in a process.
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Send an email.
Send a notification.
Send an SMS message.
Task
Call a webhook.
Create a new file.
Call a script.
AppSheet supports the following categories of tasks:
●
Send an email
●
Send a notification
●
Send an SMS message
●
Call a webhook
●
Create a new file
●
Call an Apps Script script
We will use some of these types of tasks in later modules of this course.
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Document processing
PDF, GIF, PNG, JPEG or TIFF format
Document processing is a feature of AppSheet Automation that lets you
automatically extract useful content from a document file that is stored in PDF,
GIF, PNG, JPEG, or TIFF format.
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To access AppSheet Automation features, select Automation from the
navigation menu in the AppSheet editor.
We will discuss these features in more detail in the next module of this course.
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Agenda
01
Business process automation
02
AppSheet automation overview
03
Automation patterns and use cases
04
Demo
05
Review
In this lesson, we discuss some patterns and use cases where you can use
AppSheet’s automation capabilities.
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Patterns
Here are a few patterns where automation can be applied in a business
process:
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Notifications
and information sharing
Human “in the loop”
Data change
●
Notifications and information sharing
●
Human in the loop, where a person is required to review and approve or
reject a particular step outcome, before the process can continue.
●
Data change
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Automation is frequently used to notify
users and share information with them
about events.
Automation is frequently used to notify users and share information with them
about events.
Sometimes, users need to act when such events occur.
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Notifications and information sharing
Customer
Service
For example, an app that collects customer feedback might need to notify a
customer service team when negative feedback is received about a product or
service.
A customer service representative might then need to contact a customer
regarding that feedback.
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Human “in the loop”
Automated steps
Human-facilitated
step
The “human in the loop” pattern involves a process that includes some steps
that can be automated and steps that a human must complete.
For example, a process that generates project contracts might include a set of
automated tasks and then an approval or authorization task performed by a
human.
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Human “in the loop”
V1
V2
Another example occurs in software development, where the continuous
integration and deployment process (CI/CD) involves a series of automated
tasks that perform testing and deployment of code.
Human approval might be needed to perform the final deployment of the
software to a production environment.
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Expense
approval
Authorization
of data access
requests
Employee
onboarding
review
Other examples of this pattern are:
●
●
●
Expense approval
Content or data access request authorization
Employee onboarding review
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Data change
Hats
18
Shirts
23
Pants
05
Jackets
43
Workflow
triggered
Order
replacement
The data change pattern typically involves changes made to the data used in
an application: the change triggers an automated workflow and possibly other
data changes.
For example, in an inventory management application, when the number of
units of a specific product falls below a certain threshold, an automation
workflow is triggered. The workflow then creates a supplier order for that
product to replenish its inventory.
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Use cases
Here are some use cases where these automation patterns can be employed
in business operations.
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Consider a contract generation app for service projects:
A field technician wants to create a service contract based on their review of
the work required and an estimate of the time and cost involved.
The technician uses an AppSheet app to create a contract record or row in a
table.
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This event triggers an automation bot that executes a set of steps in a
process:
To ensure that the field technician has accurately estimated the time and effort
required to complete the project, the first step checks whether the service fee
is less than $100.
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*Automation pattern:
Notification and
information sharing
If this condition is met, an email is sent to a supervisor for approval (this is an
example of the notification and information sharing automation pattern.).
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*Automation pattern:
Human in the loop
The process then waits for the supervisor to review and approve this contract
in the app. (This is an example of the human-in-the-loop automation pattern).
After the contract is approved, the process continues with the next step.
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The contract document is generated.
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The contract document is then sent to the field technician and the customer
for execution.
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In the same app, we want to capture customer feedback on the completed
project and perform certain actions.
Here’s an automation bot that accomplishes this.
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We use a feedback table to capture new customer feedback entries.
When a new entry or record is received, a bot that executes these process
steps is triggered:
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First, it checks the category of the feedback received.
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If the feedback is Good, the bot sends a notification chat that contains the
positive feedback.
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If the feedback is not Good, the bot sends a notification chat that contains the
negative feedback.
Negative feedback might require a dedicated chat space staffed with
personnel who perform follow-up actions with the customer.
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*Automation pattern:
Data change
Finally, the bot process adds the feedback information to the customer record.
This is an example of a data change automation pattern.
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Workspace
automation
In Appsheet, you can simplify business operations with automation by using
data from Google Workspace products like Sheets and Docs.
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Consider a facility inspection operation that generates reports multiple times a
day on the inspection status of various facilities in an office and emails that
report to management.
Let’s explore this use case where we implement this operation with AppSheet
automation.
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This sheet contains inspection data for the app. Note the data structure used
to manage inspections at various points in a given facility.
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We’ve created an inspection app with data from this Google Sheet that is
stored on Drive.
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Let’s use the app to create a new inspection, and mark it as passed.
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Here is our inspection detail entry.
Now, we want to send the information about this inspection to a manager for
review and approval.
Instead of manually doing this task, we can implement a bot in AppSheet to
automatically send an email whenever a new inspection has passed.
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The bot is only triggered on a data change event on the Inspections table when
a new inspection is created
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with a status of ‘Inspection Passed’.
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The bot executes a process that includes a step that runs a task.
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The type of task is Send an email, which sends an email to a list of recipients
defined in the task.
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Default content
generated by
AppSheet
The task uses default content for the subject and body of the email. If
necessary, you can also explicitly define the content of the email.
We have now set up a bot that sends an email to a manager for review and
approval each time an inspection has been marked as 'passed.'
The manager can then access the app to approve the inspection.
Ideally, the manager could review and approve the inspection directly through
the email. To support this capability, AppSheet provides a feature called
embedded app view email.
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Embedded app view
email
Embedded app view email enables users to interact directly with your app in
the email.
Users would otherwise click a link to interact with the AppSheet app in a
separate browser tab or window.
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To implement this capability, we configure the task that sends the email to use
embedded app view email.
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Here, set the app’s detail view or form view that will be displayed in the email.
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Now, when an inspection that has passed is created through the app, the
inspector’s manager receives an email that contains an app view.
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The manager can directly approve or reject this inspection entry within the
email itself, without needing to open the app and complete this action.
As we’ve seen in this example, implementing automation for your AppSheet
app by using Google Workspace products and services is fairly simple.
We will review embedded app view emails in more detail in a later module in
this course.
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Push notification
use case
Another use case for automation is when an app user must be immediately
notified of certain information that they must quickly act on.
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AppSheet supports the “Send a notification” type of task that you can use in a
bot for your app.
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You specify who should receive the notification in the “To” field of the task
definition.
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Optionally, you can customize the content of the notification.
We discuss push notifications in more detail in the next module of this course.
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Agenda
01
Business process automation
02
AppSheet automation overview
03
Automation use cases and patterns
04
Demo
05
Review
Let’s view a demo that explores a sample facilities inspection app.
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Proprietary + Confidential
Demo
Appsheet Automation
Welcome to a demo on AppSheet Automation.
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Agenda
01
Business process automation
02
AppSheet automation overview
03
Automation use cases and patterns
04
Demo
05
Review
Congratulations on completing this module on implementing business
processes with AppSheet. Let’s do a quick review.
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Proprietary + Confidential
In this module, you learned about:
01
Business process automation
02
AppSheet automation overview
03
Use cases and patterns for automating business
processes
In this module, we discussed business process automation, and the features
and capabilities of AppSheet automation.
We also identified patterns and use cases for automating business processes
within an organization.
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