Integrate Google Drive with Cascade

You can get insights of your data stored in Google Drive in Cascade with this integration. With this integration, you can achieve historical insights of your data stored in the files, and update those in Cascade automatically. A lot of actions can trigger the updates to Cascade - when a file is updated, or a file is copied or moved, a new file is created, and so on. Some of the metrics that can be tracked with this integration are the Historic Sales for 3 year period, market share of products or business over a period, Google ad metrics, API requests and responses, CSAT trend, and so on in Cascade. 

While we saw how to update current measure values in Google Sheets with Zapier in Advanced: Integrate Google Sheets with Cascade using Zapier, in this article, we'll see how to update historical measure values from Google Sheets in Google Drive via Zapier. Every time the value changes in the Google Drive files, Cascade automatically updates those for you. You can choose to set the frequency of data received from Google Drive by defining that in the Scheduler. This integration with Cascade is enabled through Zapier.

Before you proceed, it's important that these pre-requisites are met:

• A 'measure' in Cascade that has Zapier chosen as the tracking type, initial and target values defined.

• Google Drive account with a file that has the measure's progress value (that needs to be updated in Cascade).

• Zapier account.

See How to Use Zapier with Cascade article to establish a connection between Cascade and Zapier.

Navigate to Integrations > Zapier, and click Use this Zap against Update historical values of measures in Cascade Strategy from Google Drive files every hour.

On the top-left corner, enter the name of your Zap.

1. Set up the Trigger - Scheduler:

Here, you need the Scheduler to run to fetch the data from Google Drive. This can be set to run every hour, day, week, or month, depending on your requirement. With this template, it's set to fetch "every hour" by default.

Click Continue, and you can select yes or no to set up trigger on weekends. Click Test Trigger to test if the trigger is successful.

2. Find a File in Google Drive:

In this step, you connect your Google Drive account with Zapier. 

In this flow, the event is set to Find a File (since we're fetching the historical values from a file), and click Continue. Choose your Google Drive account with which the connection has to be established. Follow Google's instructions to connect. Click Continue to set up the action.

Enter the file name, choose the drive and the folder which contains the file, and click Continue. Test the action or you can skip it. This test will confirm the connection established.

3. Utilities in Formatter by Zapier:

In this step, we're letting the formatter to tweak the way you need the data to be presented in Cascade. To know what all a Formatter can do, please see Zapier's Formatter Guide.

Since we're updating values from a file, the app is set to Utilities here. In Set up action, choose Import CSV File for Transform, and in the CSV File field, choose the file from the second step (2. Find a File in Google Drive) i.e., click Show all options, and select File CSV (Exists but not shown). If you've the first row of your file as header, then select Yes in Force First Row as Header Row, else select No.

Click Continue. Now, do a test and you'll see the values in your sheet displayed here in zap, if successful.

4. Update Measure Historical Values in Cascade:

Currently, with Zapier integration, you can only update an action or measure's progress. However, we'll be adding more actions (events) and triggers in future. If there're any additional triggers or events that you would like to see us support, please let us know via live chat.

The template is prefixed to choose the app and event (update historical values) and lets you to connect your Cascade account directly in this step. Select the account, or create a new one to connect to.

Choose the workspace, plan, the relevant measure and its value (this is chosen from the "Utilities in Formatter by Zapier" step), and click Continue. Click Test and Continue. Zapier will retrieve the exact value from the specified column. Proceed to publish your Zap. Even if the test fails, skip the test, and proceed to publish.

Click Publish & Turn On. You've now successfully established the trigger and action. Now, with ease and no efforts from you, your values will get updated automatically in Cascade, every time there's a change in the values in the Google Drive files.

Go to Cascade, and in the measure that you chose Zapier as tracking, you'll see the progress updated. It might take a while to reflect the progress. Click More Info to look at the historical progress values.

For more help with the Google Drive-Zapier workflows, please search for "Google Drive" here in Zapier Help Center.

FAQs

My test with Zapier was unsuccessful. How should I proceed?

You can skip the test, and proceed to publish the zap. It might still reflect the progress in Cascade perfectly. But if it does not update the value, then reach out to us.

There is a connection error with Zapier.

Start a new zap connection and redo the steps. Or, while at the fourth step of Update Measures in Cascade, create a new connection instead of using a previously established connection.

Why can't I see my desired folder in the dropdown menu?

You need to be the owner of the folder so that Zapier can interact with your Google Drive.

I've completed all the steps, and yet the Publish to Zap is disabled. Why?

Look out for  against any of the steps. If this is shown, it means that the particular step is not completed. Please go back, complete that step, and you'll now see that the publish is enabled.