If I don’t come back from a conference with five new things that I can use tomorrow, I’m disappointed.  Autocrat was one of those beauties.  The more I work with it, the more ideas I consider.  Truly the sky’s the limit.

Autocrat is a Google add-on which connects data in Google sheets with Google Docs and with GMail for powerful outcomes.  My first use of Autocrat was with a summer camp program I taught several years ago.  I got registration data in spreadsheet form for the campers, then I created my first message a week before the first day of camp, welcoming everyone and giving some basics about what to expect.  After starting the Autocrat add-on in Google Sheets, I followed the instructions telling it which field to use for the email address and where to find my document, then let it go.  Minutes later, all the parents had been sent information about camp.  Even better, I had the message ready for next year and the year afterward, with some simple edits.

I’ve gotten adventuresome since then.  I set up a Google Form for some work I did at church.  Of course, Google Forms feed into Google Sheets, so the data was ready to go.  I decided to create a notification report when someone completed the form.  The report was simple to do in Google Docs with a few tags to connect to fields in the spreadsheet.  Then, I set it so that the completed report would be emailed to the pastor, the ministry leader, and the church secretary when someone completed the form…almost immediately.  Very efficient way to get the word to the people who needed it.

This year, when administrating a debate tournament involving dozens of students, I used Autocrat to prefill names, dates, and other details on the debate ballots, then send them to the judges for each round.  In about five minutes, the information went from schematic (in Google Sheets) to the ballot (in Google Docs) into the GMail inbox of the person who needed to complete it during the debate.  In addition, I had links to the files in my spreadsheet, so I could open them and gather the scores for tabulation without having to collect papers (or track them when someone accidently took one along with him/her at the end of the session).

Autocrat isn’t perfect.  It’s a complex app and the logistics of the procedure take a while to set up, especially if customizing documents.  I also find it helpful to run the simulation several times with little adjustments here and there to be sure that I have the documents looking their best and the emails reading correctly before “going live”.  As with any computer usage, ‘garbage in, garbage out’ holds true, so I need to check my work well to avoid embarrassing situations.  Sometimes undeliverable emails are marked by Autocrat and sometimes they aren’t.

Whether it’s newsletters to parents, class documents to each student with custom data, or reporting spreadsheet data to those with a need to know, Autocrat can make routine jobs efficient.  Check it out.

Teacher Takeaways

Automatic repetitive tasks in the classroom provides students with more information sooner and frees teacher time for better uses.

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