Chat App with Connection Requests – Google Apps Script

The third release of the Google Sheets chat app, and the one that turns an open message board into a real network: nobody can message anyone until a connection request has been sent and accepted.

Connections first

Search for a user you are not connected to and you find nothing. Open Connections, send a request, and it sits as pending until they accept or reject it. Only then do they appear in your contacts and become searchable and messageable. It is the difference between an app where strangers can reach your users and one where they cannot.

Attachments that tell you what they are

Images arrive as an inline preview you can see without opening anything. PDFs are labelled as PDFs, documents as documents, text files as text files — so a recipient knows what they are clicking before they click it. An upload notice runs while the file is on its way.

Built for a phone

The whole app — conversations, connections, profile editing — is laid out for mobile, with back navigation between screens and a scroll-to-bottom button in long threads.

Referral tracking

Signup takes an optional referral code, stored against the new account, so you can see how many users each code brought in. Alongside it sits the rest: single and double ticks, unread counts, send and receive sounds, message deletion with a deleted-by marker, blocking and unblocking, online and offline status, and a username change that rewrites your name through past conversations so nobody can slip identities.