Let's take a look at how you can update existing values in a sheet. It’s another common scenario that can be used for a variety of tasks (e.g. limiting the number of submissions for a particular form or creating a sequentially increasing counter). We’ll use this sample Google Sheet to discuss. It has a row for each employee: Employee Id, Location and Extension.

On This Page:

First, it’s important to note that Google Sheets is not a transactional system like a database and results can be unpredictable if multiple users update the same Sheet at the same time.

Step 1: Obtain an access token

As before, you have to first get an access token. This is a one-time step.

Open your web browser and login to your Google Account
Go to:
1. Live Forms Online Cloud customers: https://app.frevvo.com/google/consent
2. Live Forms In-house customers: http://<your frevvo server domain name>/google/consent
Copy and Save the access token. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. The token is used as the password for wizards and rules.
Click on the Accept button.

Step 2: Add the Business Rule

We’ve created a simple example form. Select the employee, a location and a new extension number. Click the Update Google Sheet button, wait a few seconds and see that the sheet was successfully updated. We did this using this rule:

/*member password, user*/

if (UpdateGoogleSheet.clicked) {
  var eid = EId.value; // Unique key in the Google Sheet row  
  var headers = {"user":"<google id>","password":"<your access token>"};
  var updatequery = '/google/spreadsheets/update/key/<your spreadsheet key>?wsname=Locations&query=employeeid="' + eid + '"';
  var updateparams = '&updates=location=' + Location.value + ',extension=' + Extension.value;
        
  eval('x=' + http.put(updatequery + updateparams, null, headers, false));
}

It’s triggered by clicking on the Update Google Sheet button.
We setup headers and an update query using your access token and spreadsheet key (the long ID in the URL of the Google Sheet). In this example, the name of the Google Sheet tab is Locations. Change the wsname= parameter to the name of your Google Sheet tab if you named the tab something different.
Add updateparams: we’re updating location and extension with new values.
Run the update – perform an http.put() and eval the results.

Try it yourself using the sample form.

Update a Google Sheet

Step 1: Obtain an access token

Step 2: Add the Business Rule