Hacking Autocrat When Google Changes Everything

What happens when a technology you rely on to run your classroom effectively stops working?

That's what happened with autocrat.  

For the last year and a half, we have used autocrat to create student documents.  It's sort of magic - we embed a google form on our website for each class that asks for name, email and assignment title.  When students submit the form, a script runs and creates a document with a standard (i.e. easily searchable for me and the students) title and heading.  It then sends the students an email with a link to the document it created.  The document is owned in my drive and organised in folders for each class, but the student has editing access.

Well, with the new Google sheets, scripts have lost the ability to trigger the script to run when students submit the form.  You can still set it up, and frankly, it is 10000% easier in the new sheets.  You can also still trigger the merge to happen by pressing a button, but when students are creating documents asynchronously, that won't really work. 

So we found a workaround, but it took our entire morning.  I'm creating a presentation that walks you through in case you, like us, find the auto-trigger function to be indispensable.  You can also use the video (posted below as well as linked above) I made with one major exception: you have to make a copy of this spreadsheet in order to make it work the way you see it in the video.  Also, make sure you set up your folders in advance.  Here's our system:

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Basically, we have a master folder of student work, then we have a folder for each class.  The spreadsheet copy and the form that triggers the merge HAVE to live in the folder you want the documents to go to.  However, the template doc (feel free to steal ours, just share it back with us...leave that box unchecked!) can be anywhere in your drive.

To set up the form, you need to create it from the spreadsheet menu (Tools --> Create Form).  Just make sure you set up autocrat on the sheet that contains your form data.

I know this sounds ridiculously complicated, and it definitely can be.  But it's infinitely less complicated than having hundreds of badly titled documents, or documents they forgot to share with you.

The point of technology in the classroom is supposed to be to make the learning the centre.  Technology should be as invisible as possible when it comes to workflow, and autocrat was a huge step towards giving us TONS of time back.

It is tough to set up, but it's worth it.  And if you expect your students to push beyond their frustration point, then you should be out front, modelling that for them.  This is a great opportunity to start.