3 min

Google Sheets trigger

Turn a spreadsheet into an input. What fires on a new or changed row, how to read the columns by name, and the polling interval that decides how fresh it is.

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.

Try this in Expedify →

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