Get Data From Google Sheets

Recommended read:

Understanding Variables

For single automation, you can import data from CSV format file (Comma-Separated Values file) or Google sheets in TexAu.

This is particularly helpful when you already have a CSV file or Google Sheet data beforehand that you want to use and enrich with TexAu.

Microsoft Excel files are not supported yet but will in the future.

Let's show how it works!

How to share Google Sheets

When you want to use Google Sheets input in TexAu, you need to make sure the sheet is public to access its data.

For this, the first thing you should do is share your Google Spreadsheet. The process is the same as sharing a Google Doc:

• Connect your Google Account email address
• Create or take an existing spreadsheet and give it a name
• Click the green share button in the top-right corner of your original sheet and set sharing permission dialog box to edit access.
• Set the single spreadsheet as "viewer" to get a shareable link. That way, the sheet will be accessible and readable from the outside.





When importing Google sheets data, you can select any Google spreadsheet tab and import data from it. For this, you need to:

• Do the above to share the spreadsheet publicly
• Select the current spreadsheet tab you want to import in TexAu and copy its URL, each tab as its own URL.
• Copy the URL of the current sheet tab at the top of your browser tab (navigation bar).
• Insert the link of the sheet tab in TexAu to import data of the cell range.



Add Your Sheet URL in TexAu

Select any automation you want to use.

Go to the inputs section below "OR Upload" and click on the "Google Sheet URL" icon:



Open an existing Google Sheet or create a new spreadsheet by typing sheet.new in your browser search bar.



Now, go back to your workflow and add the following:

• The google sheet URL.
• The Cookies you grabbed with TexAu chrome extension.
• For "Group URL", click the blue "select column" button and add the column corresponding to the input you want to process.
• Check the optional column header box if your sheet already has a header as the first row.



TexAu Settings

Process Only New Results



The setting "process only new results" aims at deduplicating INPUT data, not output contrary to what it may suggest.

This setting is necessary for all single automation or workflow involving clicks, sending messages, and commenting.

The reason is if you schedule your automation to run every day, you don't want to process the same profile twice in a campaign.

For this, you will need to check that box "process only new results". This setting will prevent sending twice the same message to the same profiles.

Practical example:

• Your sheet may contain duplicate profile URLs, and you don't want to process duplicates sending twice the same message.
• You schedule a workflow to run every day, but you want to process the list from where it left the day before. Because if you don't activate this setting, TexAu will reprocess the list from the start.

Wait For New Entries



The setting "wait for new entries" is helpful if you intend to add new rows manually.

For example, your campaign is already running, but you want to add a new URL you want to scrape (profile URL, Post URL, etc...).This setting is super handy: it will "listen" to any new entry (new row cell addition) you paste on the sheet and process those in the following schedule.

Other examples of the "Wait for new entries" setting:

Let's say you find a new Facebook group, post, or LinkedIn profile you want to monitor. Every day you are copy-pasting a new group URL in the sheet.

Each time you add a new group URL, TexAu will process it on the following schedule.

Other examples:

• If someone from your team or your VA is searching potential guest profiles to book meetings for you. Each time they manually collect and paste a new URL on the Sheet, TExAu will automatically process those profiles on the following schedule.
• If a customer buys a digital product (ex: courses) and leaves his social profile details on the payment page, you could outreach this customer and connect with them with TexAu.
• If someone fills a form on your website, it triggers a new row to a Google sheet with the form response. Then TexAu will "pick up" the visitor's profile each time it detects a new row.

Number Of Rows To Skip From The Sheet

This setting is helpful if you only want to process rows at a specific row index.

Let's say you have a sheet with 1000 rows. The first 500 have all the correct data, but you only want to process data from the last 500 rows.

In this example, you would input:

Number of rows to skip from the sheet = 500 (if no header) or 501 (if you have a header row on your sheet).

This setting will skip the number of rows you input.



Run your automation from Google sheet

To run the automation from Google Sheet input, click the "Submit Google Sheet" green button:



Import Data From Google Sheet In Workflows

For workflows, the process is a little bit different.

Using Google Sheet Modal

To add your Google Sheet input data, you must create a local variable first.

A local variable is like a container that connects with an external data source like a Google Spreadsheet or CSV column you want to process in TexAu.

Open the variable modal from the upper workflow menu:



To create a local variable, click add "+new":



Give your local variable the name of the data type you want to process, "profileUrl" for instance, for a list of LinkedIn profile URLs. Whatever memorable name you like that described the data (profileUrl, companyUrl, domain, mapsLink, etc...)

Leave the "Variable Value" field empty because we will take that value (ex: each profile URL) from the CSV file or Google Sheet by mapping this local variable to the column names containing the data on the sheet.



If not already done, let's create a Google Spreadsheet. Type sheet.new in your browser navigation bar to create a new Google sheet (you must be logged in to your Google account first).



Make the sheet public:



Set the sheet permission to "Viewer" only, so the sheet is readable from TexAu:



Add the local variable to the field in the starting automation. You'll notice you can also create your local variable from the "Insert Variable" modal too:



You will see these local variables showing greyed out instead of the usual variables derived from the different social platforms (which appear as colored with the social network logo icon).

Local and Global variables are grey:



Social Platforms' variables are colored:



Now, let's connect that variable to the sheet column containing all the input URLs we want to use and scrape.

Click on the "CSV/Sheet" blue button in the menu upper left corner and select "Google Sheet":





Now, add your Google Sheet URL in the first field at the top of the modal, then click the "select column" blue button to map the column containing the information you want to process in TexAu.



Select the column you want to map to the local variable:



You'll notice that the field name above is the same as the local variable we created before.

This is indeed the variable we will map to our sheet column and reuse in your workflow later on.



Now that we have created and mapped our variable to the Sheet or CSV, let's run the automation.

Click the green "Submit Google Sheet" button and launch your automation.

Fetch Data From Google Sheet (New Module 🤩)

TexAu has finally a module to store your sheet, and even better: map the column headers as variables.

• no need to input your sheet URL again and again (thank God 😤)
• map all your column headers as variables so each cell data can be an input variable in other modules in the workflow.
• Super easy to schedule compared to the old method: just input several rows to process, and each day it will be processed.

How to set this up?

First, add the Google Sheet module and select "Fetch data from Google Sheet":



If not done already, configure your Google account to get Google Drive access permission to access the sheet, then select the Google account you want to use for this automation.

Then add your sheet URL after setting its permission as "viewer" to be accessible from outside:



TexAu will fetch all the headers from your sheet and map them as input variables:



Then as you build your workflow, you will be able to access your sheet header in other automation modules.



For example:



Finally, you will be able to add the corresponding sheet headers as variables:



Number Of Rows



This setting is the number of rows you want to process per schedule or run once.

If empty, TexAu will process all the rows until it hits the daily limit and wait 24 hours to process the remaining every day.

If you input a value, let's say 20 rows, and then schedule this workflow to run every day, TexAu will run 20 rows from your sheet every day.

Using Custom Fields In Message Module

The process below describes sending broadcast messages to a list or profile URL on LinkedIn and Twitter. Also, it only applies when using standalone automation, not workflows.

It's preferable and easier to use the workflow builder for LinkedIn and Twitter drip campaigns instead.

This one is handy when you don't want to start from scratch and already have previous data you wish to process.

Let's say you have a list of prospects' profile URLs on a Google Sheet, and you want to send a connection request or message them.

In this example, we will send a message to a list of 1st-degree connections. For this, we will use the "Send a LinkedIn Message" and use Google Sheet as input.



The "first name" data we want to personalize our message is on our sheet's column "K". That's the variable we will use.



Let's hook up our Google Sheet by clicking the green Google Sheet Icon below:



Add your Google Sheet URL, and set its permission as "Viewer" so it's accessible from outside.

Then above the message box on the right, click the blue "Insert Tags" button:



From here, a window will pop up. Scroll down until you find the destination sheet column containing the "firstName" variable. In our example here, column "K".

We will use that column and dynamically use the first name data as a personalization variable in our messages:





Then after that, we will use another variable. Again, click the blue "insert tags" button and this time use the column containing the company name, in our case column "N":





Finally, let's add the column containing the LinkedIn profile URLs we will send the personalized message to, in this example column "H":





Finally, check the "process only new results" box to process only new profile URLs and prevent sending any duplicate messages if an identical profile URL is present in the list.

Then click the green "submit google sheet" button to launch the automation:



Additional Tips

Use Cell formulas

You can indeed use Google Sheet cell formulas in TexAu. This is particularly useful when you need to concatenate values to make dynamic queries.

Examples:

• Processing multiple queries on Google Search or Google Maps
• Building dynamic URLs from URL parameters



Google form as input

You can perfectly use Google Forms to send the form responses to a Google Sheet and process it with TexAu.

Examples:

• Outreach webinar or event attendees on LinkedIn
• Searching their company address on Google Maps for Sales Reps
• Searching the company domain from the company name