School Announcements: Auto-Generating Announcement Documents (printable and viewable online)

Rather than having to manually create a document every day with the daily announcements, I've created a script that will do it for you. There are, of course, other features that could be added, but this is good enough for today.

To start, announcements are submitted via a Google Form, so they end in a spreadsheet. There are three pieces of data: the text of the announcement, the category, and the expiry date.

The script creates a new Google Document (in a public folder), then takes data from the spreadsheet and pastes it into that newly created document. The code for the script follows. (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike).

function createAnnoucementDocument() {
  // Set up a trigger to run this every weekday, perhaps at 8:00 am
 // Define a custom paragraph style.
var styleHeading = {};
 styleHeading[DocumentApp.Attribute.HORIZONTAL_ALIGNMENT] = DocumentApp.HorizontalAlignment.CENTER;
 styleHeading[DocumentApp.Attribute.FONT_SIZE] = 18;
 styleHeading[DocumentApp.Attribute.BOLD] = true;

var styleCategory = {};
 styleCategory[DocumentApp.Attribute.HORIZONTAL_ALIGNMENT] = DocumentApp.HorizontalAlignment.LEFT;
 styleCategory[DocumentApp.Attribute.FONT_SIZE] = 12;
 styleCategory[DocumentApp.Attribute.BOLD] = true;

var styleText = {};
 styleText[DocumentApp.Attribute.HORIZONTAL_ALIGNMENT] = DocumentApp.HorizontalAlignment.LEFT;
 styleText[DocumentApp.Attribute.FONT_SIZE] = 12;
 styleText[DocumentApp.Attribute.BOLD] = false;

  // Get the current date
  var app = UiApp.createApplication();
  var dateToday = new Date();
  // date formatting here: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html
  var formattedDateToday = Utilities.formatDate(new Date(), "MST", "yyyy-MM-dd");
  
  // Create the document
  var documentName = formattedDateToday + " School Announcements";
  var doc = DocumentApp.create(documentName);
  // Move the document to the shared folder entitled "Announcements"
  var documentFile = DocsList.getFileById(doc.getId());
  var folderName = DocsList.getFolder("Announcements");
  documentFile.addToFolder(folderName);
  
  // the spreadsheet that contains the results of the announcement submission form
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.openById("***INSERT_SPREADSHEET_KEY_HERE***").getSheets()[0];

  // Start creating the body of the document
  var body = doc.getBody();
  
  body.appendParagraph("Name of School Goes Here\r"+formattedDateToday).setAttributes(styleHeading);

  // Read the whole spreadsheet into a list
  //  if Expiry Date (column D) is > or equal to today's date then process it, else ignore
  //  switch if category match then append to document

  var data = sheet.getRange(2, 2, sheet.getLastRow(), sheet.getLastColumn()).getValues();
  for (var row=0, total=data.length; row < total; row++) {
    var rowData = data[row];
    var announcementText = rowData[0];
    var announcementCategory = rowData[1];
    var announcementExpiry = rowData[2];
    if (announcementExpiry >= dateToday) {
      switch (announcementCategory) {
        case "General":
          body.appendParagraph(announcementText).setAttributes(styleText);
        break;
      }
    }
  }
  body.appendParagraph("Events and Meetings").setAttributes(styleCategory);
    for (var row=0, total=data.length; row < total; row++) {
    var rowData = data[row];
    var announcementText = rowData[0];
    var announcementCategory = rowData[1];
    var announcementExpiry = rowData[2];
    if (announcementExpiry >= dateToday) {
      switch (announcementCategory) {
        case "Events and Meetings":
          body.appendParagraph(announcementText).setAttributes(styleText);
        break;
      }
    }
  }
  body.appendParagraph("Athletics").setAttributes(styleCategory);
    for (var row=0, total=data.length; row < total; row++) {
    var rowData = data[row];
    var announcementText = rowData[0];
    var announcementCategory = rowData[1];
    var announcementExpiry = rowData[2];
    if (announcementExpiry >= dateToday) {
      switch (announcementCategory) {
        case "Athletics":
          body.appendParagraph(announcementText).setAttributes(styleText);
        break;
      }
    }
  }
  body.appendParagraph("Cafeteria").setAttributes(styleCategory);
    for (var row=0, total=data.length; row < total; row++) {
    var rowData = data[row];
    var announcementText = rowData[0];
    var announcementCategory = rowData[1];
    var announcementExpiry = rowData[2];
    if (announcementExpiry >= dateToday) {
      switch (announcementCategory) {
          case "Cafeteria":
        body.appendParagraph(announcementText).setAttributes(styleText);
        break;
      }
    }
  }
  return app;
}