Helping KWF Editorial Employees Excel with an Improved Apps Script Integration

KWF Editorial, a leading provider of editorial office services, moved to Google Workspace (G Suite) for collaboration, productivity, and cloud computing with the help of their Google Cloud Premier Partner HiView Solutions in August 2018. Since then, they have enjoyed success with the new platform, but when they noticed problems with their time-tracking tool, they reached out to HiView’s team of product experts for assistance.

The challenge

KWF Assistant Task Timer, built on Google Sheets and Apps Script, tracks individual task-based timesheets on a variety of dashboards using a start/stop style timer. Some employees experienced the timer crashing or causing errors which then had to be manually corrected. This was a major issue, as accurate data was essential and the tool was used daily by 78 employees in order to track key project tasks.

The approach

Expert HiView engineer Jacobo began by working with the KWF team to administer a survey to users in order to better understand the issues. He then examined KWF Assistant Task Timer’s code, and determined that the spreadsheet would crash when launched because the large quantity of Scripts executions would overload most devices’ RAM. This was overcome by reducing the rate of executions within the code. By streamlining workflows and advising users on best practices (clearing their cache, using an up-to-date operating system, etc.) user experience was also greatly improved, as revealed by employee survey results.

Due to the use of dynamic variables that are easily modifiable, the tool was also made scalable—it can be used as a template going forward for the KWF team without the risk of breaking the new code.

The results

• All code-related performance issues were eliminated
• Timecard submission errors were reduced from dozens per day to 0
• Employees reported an improved user experience upon project completion