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Limitations

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Creating a Google Sheets delivery

To use Google Sheets as a destination, you’ll need an existing Google Sheet workbook that you have write access to. This sheet should be blank as Omni includes column headers in the delivery.

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1. Configure the delivery settings

  1. Navigate to a published dashboard.
  2. Click File > Deliveries & Alerts. The delivery options will display on the left side of the page.
  3. Fill in the following:
    • Delivery - Select Schedule or Alert.
    • Send -
    • Destination - Select .
    • Name - Enter a name for the delivery.
If creating an alert, use the Alert tab to define the conditions that must be met to trigger the delivery. For example, you have a chart that tracks the Total sales for your ecommerce company. Using an alert, you can trigger a delivery when the total of your sales has changed.

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2. Configure the delivery schedule

In this step, you’ll define the cadence for the delivery:
  • For schedules, this determines when Omni will deliver the specified content to the destination
  • For alerts, this tells Omni when to check if the current query results meet the conditions required to send the delivery
Schedules can be defined using the visual options or with cron:
Use the UI options (Daily, Weekly, etc.) to select a time period.By default, schedules are set to send in the local timezone of the delivery creator’s computer. Use the Times are in drop down to change the timezone.
A cron expression is a string that describes the individual details of a schedule:
OrderUnitAllowed valuesAllowed special characters
1minute0-59* , - /
2hour0-23* , - /
3day of month1-31* , - / L W ?
4month1-12 or JAN-DEC* , - /
5day of week1-7 or SUN-SAT* , - / L W ?
6yearany* , - /
Using cron, you can create schedules like the following:
At 9:00 AM every day
0 9 ? * * *
At 6:30AM on the last day of the month
30 6 L * ? *
At 8:45 AM every day, Monday through Friday
45 8 ? * MON-FRI *
Omni uses Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) syntax for cron expressions. Refer to the AWS documentation for more information. By default, the most frequent you can configure a schedule is hourly.
Schedule send timezone may be different than query run timezone. For example, if your Database timezone is UTC with no other timezone conversion settings and you set your schedule to send at 12:00 PM PST, the query will execute at 8:00 PM UTC.Refer to your connection timezone settings for more information.

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3. Select format and filter options

The Chart tab allows you to specify format and filter options for the delivery:
  • Apply data formatting, such as rounding
  • Exclude hidden columns
  • Send all possible results, which will ignore any limits applied to the underlying query
  • Set filter or control values for the delivery. Some formats will have additional customization options. PDF formats, for example, will allow you to specify the orientation and page size for the PDF.
You can use filters to customize content for different recipients! For example, set a filter to A in a scheduled delivery to recipient A, and in another scheduled delivery to recipient B, set a filter to B.

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4. Connect your Google Drive account

This step is only required the first time a Google Sheets delivery is created in your Omni instance.
  1. Click the Google Sheets tab.
  2. Connect your Google Drive account. Grant Omni all requested permissions or deliveries may not succeed. When you connect your Google account, you grant Omni permission to deliver data to Sheets on your behalf. You will not see Omni listed as a collaborator in the Sheets share modal. To review or revoke this access, refer to your Google account connections.
  3. Use the link in the Spreadsheet section to browse for and select the Google Sheet workbook to send the delivery to.
  4. In Omni, select a Write mode for the delivery:
    • Overwrite the data on a sheet - Data in the sheet is overwritten on each successful delivery, including column headers
    • Create a new sheet for each delivery - Creates a new sheet in the workbook for each successful delivery
    • Append the data on a sheet - On every successful delivery, new results are added to the specified sheet starting with the first empty row.
      Write mode options have a few considerations if you’re working with pivoted data:
      • If creating a new schedule and Omni detects pivoted data in the query, the Append option will be unavailable
      • If editing a schedule and Omni detects that the query has changed to include pivoted data, it will change the write mode to Overwrite
      Refer to the Delivering pivoted data section for more information.
  5. Lastly, define the sheet name. The field that displays depends on the Write mode you selected:
    • Overwrite or append - Enter the name of the sheet Omni should write data to in the Sheet name field. If Omni can’t find a sheet with this exact name, it will create a sheet.
    • New sheet for each delivery - Enter a prefix for the sheet name in the New sheet name prefix field. A Unix timestamp of the delivery time will be appended to create the full sheet name: {prefix}_{unixtimestamp}

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5. Test the delivery

If you want to test the delivery before saving, click the Test Now button in the bottom left corner of the page. This will send the dashboard/chart to the destination using the current settings. For example, using Test Now would send the delivery to all Recipients.
The Test Now button will be unavailable for alerts if the Condition type is Results have changed or Results have stayed the same. A workaround is to use the Send Now option to manually trigger the delivery, which is available once the delivery has been saved.Save the alert and then click the icon to display the Send Now option. This will initiate a check on the alert condition - if the condition isn’t met, the delivery will show as successful but not send anything.

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6. Save the delivery

When finished, click Save to create the delivery.

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Delivering pivoted data

If your query contains pivoted data, there are a few things to consider when configuring a delivery to Google Sheets. In a typical table, column order doesn’t usually have to be strictly maintained to retain the accuracy of the data. In pivoted data, however, the data’s column structure is directly tied to the position of its pivot dimensions. To ensure the data that Omni delivers is accurate, only the Overwrite and Create new sheet options are supported for delivering pivoted data:
  • If creating a new schedule and Omni detects pivoted data in the query, the Append option will be unavailable
  • If editing a schedule and Omni detects that the query has changed to include pivoted data, it will change the write mode to Overwrite