Recently, Google announced the general availability of AppSheets Automation, an additional capability to AppSheet, the company’s no-code development platform. With Automation, customers can automate repetitive tasks and business processes.
The company acquired AppSheet in January 2020, and later in the fall, released early access to AppSheets Automation as a significant addition to AppSheet. AppSheets Automation combines no-code and Google AI to make it easier for end-users to automate business processes. The capability is now in GA, including new features such as more innovative extraction of structured data from documents and compatibility with a broader range of data sources like Google Sheets and Drive.
Prithpal Bhogill, product manager, AppSheet, Business Application Platform, wrote in a blog post on the GA release:
Manually entering receipt data or tracking down paper copies is time-consuming, for example. But with AppSheet Automation’s Intelligent Document Processing feature, these tasks no longer need to be inefficient. Unstructured data such as invoices, receipts, and W-9s can be automatically extracted from documents, all thanks to Google Cloud’s Document AI. Process automations such as these help organizations to reclaim time and talent spent on repetitive tasks, empowering a company’s talent to spend more time on strategic and impactful work.
Similarly, an enterprise can process documents such as invoices and receipts with Power Automate, leveraging, for instance, the Robotic Processing Automation (RPA) feature combined with AI. Yet, Google, with its recent partnership with Automation Anywhere, will also bring RPA to AppSheet.
According to Jennifer Cadence, a product marketing manager at Google, no-code development is an essential part of digital transformation, and reported by InfoQ earlier this year. Furthermore, no/low-code platform emerges from the early adopter phase - each of the three big public cloud providers launched their own respective no/low-code platform – Microsoft with the Power Platform and AWS with Honeycode.
In general, the no/low-code platforms provide the benefits of saving time and increased productivity. Amit Zavery, vice president and head of platform for Google Cloud, stated in a tweet:
AppSheet Automation from @googlecloudtech frees up time for everyone.
Engineers spend less time developing automating solutions, and non-technical workers enjoy a more automated workflow.
Win-win for everyone.
Lastly, the pricing details of AppSheet are available on the pricing page, in addition to more information on automation, including guidance on the documentation pages, samples, and videos.