New Feature: Live Connection to Google Sheets

Zing now has a Live Connection mode for Google Sheets, allowing you to live query Google Sheets and add multiple tabs of a sheet at once.

This means that if you make a change to a Google Sheet data source, Zing will always be querying from the latest version of the sheet instead of a snapshot.

How to set up live Google Sheets

To add a live Google Sheet as a data source

From the iOS, Android Zing Data app, or the web console:

1. Tap ‘Sources’ then ‘Add data source’
2. Specify Google Sheets as the data source type
3. Turn on the ‘Live Connection’
4. Grant Zing Data the appropriate permissions to your gSheet
5. Confirm the connection works.Note: Your spreadsheet must have headers in the first row, have the first column in cell A1, and have contiguous columns for Zing to successfully connect.

Adding multiple sheets at once (live gSheets only)

• Follow steps 1-4 outlined above.

• A list of all the tabs within your sheet will be displayed, and you can turn on or off the tabs you want to make accessible in Zing

  

  Whenever you tap a saved question from the home screen or sources screen, or create / modify a question, Zing will pull from the most recent version of the Google Sheet.

An example with Google Sheets and Google Forms

This makes it possible to use gSheets like a lightweight database - and we’ve seen customers create interactive, real-time visualizations of form results in just a few minutes:

1. Save Google Forms responses to a Google Sheet
2. Connect Zing to Google Sheets as a data source (specifying ‘Live Connection’ in the setup screen)
3. Display a live dashboard of results in Zing - easily accessible on mobile, the web, or shareable as a public URL

Before this release, Zing supported Google Sheets snapshots as a data source, and that functionality is still available. However, if your data changes frequently and you want Zing to always be pulling the latest columns and values from your gSheet, you’ll want to use the ’live connection’ option.

A note

If you use the ‘Live Connection’ option to link Zing and the Google Sheet, be aware that modifying the sheet in a way that makes it improperly formatted (see above) will result in questions / graphs not loading correctly.

The ’live connection’ option for gSheets is available on the free ‘basic’ plan for through June 1, 2023, after which it will be on the ‘Pro’ plan. After June 1, 2023 you’ll need to be on a ‘Pro’ or above to use live querying.