Module · A system, a clock or a person

Google Sheets trigger

Lesson 9 of 10 · 3 min

Spreadsheets are where work goes when there is no system for it yet. The event sign-up list, the leads a colleague collected at a conference, the weekly numbers somebody pastes in on Friday.

The Google Sheets trigger treats one of those as an input: a row appears, and a workflow runs.

Three events

From the node's validator; as with the calendar trigger, these strings are not enforced by the schema.

Event	Fires when
`new_row`	A row is added. The default, and the common case.
`row_updated`	An existing row changes.
`row_deleted`	A row is removed.

new_row

Fires when: A row is added. The default, and the common case.

row_updated

Fires when: An existing row changes.

row_deleted

Fires when: A row is removed.

Configuration

Six fields. The integration and the spreadsheet are required; the rest have workable defaults.

Field	What it holds
`integration_id`	Google Sheets integration to use
`spreadsheet_url`	Full URL of the Google Sheet
`spreadsheet_id`	ID of the Google Spreadsheet to monitor
`sheet_name`	Name of the sheet/tab to monitor Defaults to `Sheet1`.
`trigger_events`	Events that should trigger the workflow
`poll_interval_minutes`	How often to check for changes Defaults to `5`.

integration_id

What it holds: Google Sheets integration to use

spreadsheet_url

What it holds: Full URL of the Google Sheet

spreadsheet_id

What it holds: ID of the Google Spreadsheet to monitor

sheet_name

What it holds: Name of the sheet/tab to monitor Defaults to Sheet1.

trigger_events

What it holds: Events that should trigger the workflow

poll_interval_minutes

What it holds: How often to check for changes Defaults to 5.

sheet_name defaults to Sheet1 — worth setting deliberately, because the tab somebody actually uses is rarely the one Google created.

Reading the row

Reference	Holds
`{{googlesheetstrigger_1.row_data}}`	The row, keyed by column header.
`{{googlesheetstrigger_1.headers}}`	The header row itself.
`{{googlesheetstrigger_1.row_number}}`	Which row it was.
`{{googlesheetstrigger_1.changed_columns}}`	On `row_updated`, which cells changed.
`{{googlesheetstrigger_1.old_row_data}}`	The previous values, for comparison.

{{googlesheetstrigger_1.row_data}}

Holds: The row, keyed by column header.

{{googlesheetstrigger_1.headers}}

Holds: The header row itself.

{{googlesheetstrigger_1.row_number}}

Holds: Which row it was.

{{googlesheetstrigger_1.changed_columns}}

Holds: On row_updated, which cells changed.

{{googlesheetstrigger_1.old_row_data}}

Holds: The previous values, for comparison.

Columns come through by header name: {{googlesheetstrigger_1.row_data.Email}}. That is convenient and it is also the fragile part.

A spreadsheet is a shared document, and renaming a column silently breaks the workflow. Somebody tidies “Email” to “Email Address” and every run afterwards reads an empty value — no error, because the reference simply resolves to nothing. Spreadsheet inputs need either a header row people know not to touch, or a workflow that checks the field is non-empty before using it.

Polling, and what it costs

poll_interval_minutes defaults to 5. Nothing pushes a change to Expedify — the trigger checks the sheet on that interval, so five minutes is also the worst-case delay between a row appearing and your workflow running.

Shortening the interval makes it fresher and makes the check run more often. For most spreadsheet work — leads to follow up, records to import — five minutes is invisible, and there is rarely a good reason to go lower.

Is a spreadsheet the right input?

This trigger is genuinely useful and it is also a bridge, not a destination. A sheet is easy to start with, and it has no validation, no permissions worth the name, and no protection against somebody sorting the rows.

Good fit — a one-off import, a list from an event, a partner who will only ever send a spreadsheet.
Better replaced — anything ongoing and business-critical. A webhook or a form writing straight to the CRM removes a whole class of “someone edited the sheet” problems.

Both directions exist. This is the trigger. There is also a Google Sheets action that writes rows, covered in the Actions path — a common pairing is reading rows here and writing results back there, so the sheet stays the shared surface people look at.

Try it

Connect a Google integration and point the trigger at a test sheet and tab.
Leave it on new_row, write {{googlesheetstrigger_1.row_data}} into a note, and add a row.
Time how long it takes to fire — that is your polling interval, felt rather than read.
Now rename a column and add another row, and watch the reference come back empty. Better to see it here than in production.

Next: the Click trigger — the last of the ten, and the only one a person starts on purpose.