What a configuration could hand over
There is no point making a production engineer learn a new tool. The sheet can remain the source of prices and limits with the configurator reading from it, and in the other direction every enquiry can be written back into a view your people already know how to read.
Price list sheet
The configurator could read rates, surcharges and size limits from named ranges in the sheet. A price changed in the spreadsheet would then reach the website without touching any code.
Rules sheet
Combinations that must never meet can stay as rows on a separate sheet. A fixed column layout is agreed during implementation so the configurator can read them reliably.
Enquiries sheet
Each submitted configuration can be appended as a new row at the bottom of the table: date, contact, dimensions, options, price and the link to the 3D preview.
Sales columns
Next to the written data there can be columns your salesperson fills in by hand. The configurator would not write to them, so their notes would never be overwritten.
What we need to connect it
Access could run through a Google Cloud service account that you share the spreadsheet with as an editor, or through an OAuth 2.0 sign-in under a company account.
We need to know which sheets and ranges are the source of prices and which sheet the enquiries should be written to.
For testing we recommend a copy of the spreadsheet, so trial enquiries stay out of the live overview.
Sheet names and column order are fixed in the agreed mapping, because a renamed sheet or an inserted column would break the reading.
Worth deciding up front
- The Sheets API has per-minute request quotas per project and per user. The configurator would therefore not read the price list on every customer click but keep it in a cache.
- Where a formula calculates the price, the interface can return its result. For a complex calculation we will consider moving the rule into the configurator itself instead.
- When several people edit the spreadsheet, it pays to lock the price sheets with protected ranges so nobody overwrites them by accident.
Questions about this connection
Will a price change in the sheet show on the website straight away?
That depends on how often the configurator reads the sheet. The interval is agreed during implementation so the price list stays current without running into Google's quotas.
Can we write our own notes into the enquiries sheet?
Your own notes can go into the columns the configurator does not use. Which columns belong to it is set in the mapping, so the entries do not overwrite each other.
Is a regular Google account enough, or do we need Workspace?
The Sheets interface works with a spreadsheet in a regular Google account as well as in Workspace. We still recommend keeping a company price list in a company account rather than a personal one.
Other integrations
Put Google Sheets to work in your sales.
Tell us what you sell and how an enquiry is handled today. On the demo you will see the configurator, and we will go through which data could flow from it into your system.