Google Sheets
This integration allows you to quickly setup and send responder answers to a Google sheet.
When to use Google Sheets
You should consider Google sheets if:
You or your business uses the Google suite of products
The traffic to your form is low (<20 responders a day). Using Google sheets will count towards your Google API limits. Formsort cannot guarantee delivery of responses if this limit is reached.
You have a one-off form for a small use case
You need to quickly get your form up and running, and you have no engineering resources
You’re a healthcare business that needs HIPAA compliance and have signed a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with Google Workspace products. Google Sheets uses high-level encryption to safeguard protected health information (PHI), but you still need to sign a BAA as this data will be stored on Google’s servers.
You should consider a database (full list of supported options) if:
You have high traffic volume to your form
You have concerns that data in the Google sheet will be edited or deleted. Remember that whoever has access to the sheet can modify data.
You want the durability, consistency, and query capabilities of a traditional database
You’re a healthcare business that needs HIPAA compliance but haven’t signed a BAA with Google Workspace products.
If any of the above statements are true, you should store responder data in a traditional database. For these needs Formsort offers integrations for BigQuery, PostgreSQL, and Redshift. For anything else, you can use our webhook integration.
Authentication
A Google account is required to authenticate the integration and to insert answers.
Edit permissions are required for the sheet, and losing permissions or access to the sheet will cause answers to not be recorded.
Frequency
The frequency of inserting a row to Google Sheet can be configured as:
On Finalize: only at the end of the flow.
Debounced: when the responder abandons the flow after a period of inactivity, and at the end of the flow. Formsort recommends using this setting to reduce the load.
Note: The Google Sheets integration will use your Google API quota, and Formsort cannot guarantee response delivery if this quota is reached.
Schema and Insertion Rules
When creating your flow, the questions and corresponding variables will automatically create the response schema that will be transposed into the sheet. Each variable in a flow will be mapped to a single column in the sheet.
When inserting to an empty sheet, the first row is written as a header row following the defined flow schema. Following responses will appear beneath in the corresponding columns.
If the schema is updated, following insertions will write in the order of their appearance within the flow. If a column is deleted or edited within the sheet, and the flow contains the variable, a new column will be created in the first empty column that is found.
If a flow variable is edited or deleted, Formsort will not update the google sheet. The existing corresponding column for a deleted variable will be skipped on future insertions.
All insertions will use the default formatting options for the sheet.
All variables will be sent to the sheet. Future improvements will allow a user to select which response variables to send.
Setting up Google Sheets
Note: To use the Google Sheet integration you must have an existing flow.
Turn on the Google Sheets integration
2. Connect your Google account and accept all access options. This is required for the integration to work. Formsort will never access information that has not been explicitly set in the integration.
3. Select which sheet to send the responses to and how often.
4. Test and save
You can test the connection on demand by sending an example payload to your selected Google sheet.
When you are ready to deploy, be sure to Save your work with the button in the top right corner.
If you have deployed flows previous to integrating with or updating your Google Sheets integration, it is advisable to re-deploy those flows.
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