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ALI AFSHAR: Hi, everyone.
Welcome to Google Developers Live.
We're going to be talking today about the Google Drive
SDK and specifically how you can use various parts of the
Google Drive user interface to drive users to your
application and to make your application more useful.
So when we set about writing the Google Drive SDK, our main
goal was to allow you, the developer, to be able to write
applications that are as good and as fully-featured as the
Google Docs applications.
That's Google Docs spreadsheets presentations.
That's what we're aiming to do.
So one of the steps we recently made was a huge step
towards this, and it's the Create menu.
And I don't know if you've seen on Google Drive, there's
a Create menu, and you click it to create new documents.
Well, we've added the ability for your applications to
appear there.
And I'm joined today with Greg, who's going to go
through this and show us some of the things.
So Greg, if we could look at Google Drive and look at the
Create menu.
GREG KNOKE: Yes, if we can go to my computer.
OK.
So here you'll see the Create button.
So if you click on the Create button, on the left you have
the original Google Drive docks types.
And you can see here I've already got one app installed,
Lucidchart, which is a really fantastic diagramming tool.
So if we click on Lucidchart, you'll see that we
go to the app page.
And while we wait for it to load--
here we are.
So it's loading.
You can see we've got Lucidchart up.
Just make a new document, and let's just add a couple little
things to it here.
And now if I go back to Drive, you'll see that the document
has already appeared in my Google Drive.
ALI AFSHAR: OK.
So that's really awesome.
So with one click, the user is being directed to Lucidchart.
You've created the file, and then it's there in your Drive
for you to access from all your machines.
OK, fantastic.
So if we could then look at that Lucidchart
file in your Drive.
If you right click on that--
GREG KNOKE: Right.
Then we have this Open With feature, so we can open the
document with Lucidchart.
Or if we had other apps that could open this document type,
which this is a proprietary document type, so there are
none in this case.
But say the PDFs, we could do.
You can see we might have a couple more options for
opening this type.
And if I had some sort of PDF viewer app installed, we would
see it there.
ALI AFSHAR: If you click on it to Open With, can you show us
what happens there?
GREG KNOKE: Yeah.
So if we click on the Open With Lucidchart, you'll see
that we, again, open this document directly into
Lucidchart.
ALI AFSHAR: OK.
So that's great.
So is there any way I can get more apps or how would that
happen there?
GREG KNOKE: So also you'll see here at the bottom of the
Create menu, we have Connect More Apps.
So let's just go find another app to connect to Drive.
There's one in particular we were looking for.
ALI AFSHAR: So while you find that-- so this looks a bit
like the Chrome Web Store, and that's because it's leveraging
the same technology as the Chrome Web Store.
GREG KNOKE: Right.
So here we found Cacoo, another diagramming app
because maybe I want some other feature
that only Cacoo has.
So we'll install it, and you'll see I
just clicked Install.
I was prompted, and it's still loading.
This'll take just a second.
There we go.
So it's connected now.
And now, if you see, I click in the Create menu
and Cacoo is here.
So let's go create a Cacoo document.
ALI AFSHAR: So obviously, there's authorization.
The app has to be granted authorization by you, but that
only has to happen once.
GREG KNOKE: Right.
ALI AFSHAR: The first time?
GREG KNOKE: Oh, an error has occurred.
OK.
So we'll try that again.
See if it works this time.
OK.
There we go.
So now you can see I had previously installed this, but
we'll just make a new document.
So we'll just start a new Cacoo document here.
There we go.
ALI AFSHAR: This is another diagramming app?
GREG KNOKE: Right.
So here's another diagramming app, Cacoo.
You can see it's the same idea as Lucidchart.
And let's just go ahead and save this diagram, and so now
the diagram is saved.
And if I go back to Drive and refresh here--
well, this one hasn't saved to Drive yet.
I'm not sure why that happened, but eventually,
Cacoo's document will show up here as well.
ALI AFSHAR: OK.
So that's awesome.
So you can create and open files with these applications,
and you can install these applications.
And great for your users as they don't have to leave
Google Drive to actually install this stuff.
It can all happen in there, in Google Drive.
So now I've installed these applications.
Really important is, how do I remove them and how do I
manage them?
GREG KNOKE: So say you decide you don't really need an
application anymore for some reason.
Here, I'll go back a step here.
You see the little gear here.
If you click on the Settings gear and then go to Manage
Apps and bring up the Application Manager.
ALI AFSHAR: Could you show us?
Go through there and tell us what's in there?
GREG KNOKE: So in here, you have all the different
applications you've installed to your Google Drive.
So you see I have a few, like PicMonkey and Lucidchart, that
are already installed, and Cacoo, which I just installed.
So then you have options.
You can view the product page.
You can view all the files that the app is authorized to.
You can look at the files this app has created.
Or, if you decide you don't need the app anymore, you can
just disconnect it from Drive.
And so, if we disconnect it from Drive, you see it
disappears from the list of available applications.
Click OK.
But this won't actually delete the files that this
application has created from your Drive.
ALI AFSHAR: So exactly.
You don't lose your data.
What it does is it removes all the authorization.
It is equivalent to you revoking the tokens, so the
app can't access those files anymore.
But they're there if you ever want to use them again.
You can just re-install the application if you want to.
So that's really great.
Bring your application in front of all the
Google Drive users.
Put it there, put the icon there, and make it easy for
people to click.
Make it easy for people to use your application.
How do you do it?
OK, that's kind of really important
but also really easy.
A lot of these web applications have a Chrome Web
Store listing.
If you don't have a Chrome Web Store listing, I kind of want
to know why because it's the perfect fit for your
applications that create stuff.
All you have to do is add a couple of values into your
Chrome Web Store manifest.
And those are the container value, which has
to be Google Drive.
So you add that container value.
And then you need to link your project ID as well, so we know
that the right project is having the authorization
details and that kind of thing.
OK?
So it's very, very easy.
If you go to Google Developers--
sorry, developers.googl e.com/drive/listing, that is
where you can find information on this and
simple copy and paste.
But you just add a couple of lines to your manifest, and
magically, you'll appear in this list.
I would think that this is a really
advantageous thing to do.
It's not something you do at the start when you're first
building your app.
But when it's good, when it works, when it's polished, put
it there, and people will be able to find your app.
If you look back on some of our previous videos, so like
at Google I/O, they show that there are a few case studies.
My advice-- there was one in particular who said that not
only were they getting more conversions coming from Google
Drive, but these people were more premium users.
They were more likely to pay for services and
that kind of thing.
So I would think that it's a really, really good thing for
you to do to promote your app as a marketing exercise that
really works.
So that's mostly us.
Let's see if we've got any questions that asked.
OK, great.
I see no questions, so I assume that's
all perfectly clear.
It's kind of obvious, really.
Have you got anything to add, Greg?
GREG KNOKE: I have nothing to add right now.
I think you explained it all very well.
ALI AFSHAR: OK, brilliant.
So thanks, everyone.
Get in touch with us on Stack Overflow, on the Google Drive
Community, on Google+.
We're always happy to talk to you.
We're always willing to look at your applications and see
if you want to improve the flow or polish it in some ways
because we're keen for the users to be able to use this
stuff well.
OK?
So thanks very much.
Take care.
We'll see you next time.
GREG KNOKE: Thank you.
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