Can Retool update its users when they change the Google API documentation?

I was facing an issue with Retool Workflows for the longest time starting in mid-September, because all of my Google API calls weren't working, despite having worked just days before.

Eventually now, in October, after lots of debugging, I found out that Retool had changed the way it authenticated with Google in the documentation:

In particular, Retool had changed the required authorization URLs from
https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth
to
https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/v2/auth?access_type=offline&prompt=consent

without alerting its users. Once I changed the Authorization URL, everything started working again.

Is there some place to subscribe to potentially breaking alerts or changes like these in the future? Or is there a way for Retool to automatically change these configurations for us in the future? It would have saved a lot of pain these last few weeks.

Thank you!

1 Like

Hello @Jeffrey_Yu,

My sincerest apologize for the confusion! We can definitely improve our communication with users on changes that we push to cloud.

We do publish release notes to our docs page here. With details on both stable version updates that cloud users are upgraded to, as well as edge versions which are optional to upgrade to for self hosted users.

I can make a feature request for added email 'news letter' support especially for breaking changes such as DB connectors, API changes and similar critical changes that take place.

1 Like

Great! I love you guys for always focusing on how to improve as an org -- that's what keeps us using Retool (and loving it)

Thanks for the publish release notes link! I was wondering where the change to the Google Docs API was reported -- I couldn't find it in the Stable, Edge, or Legacy dropdowns.

1 Like

Of course no problem!

We love to hear that, we are always looking for ways to improve and to best serve out customers :saluting_face:

I just double checked and I think you are right, I can't find notes on that change anywhere :sweat:

I am curious as to how Google announced this change as well :sweat_smile: as we likely had to find out about the change from users having their old URL fail and then had to make a super fast change to adapt to Google's surprise URL change.

Definitely want to ensure that everyone is aware of changes weather they come from Retool or from third party service providers that we use for features.