Using Connected Sheets

Connected Sheets is a feature between Google’s Sheets and BigQuery that provides users the ability to access, analyze, visualize, and share data through a spreadsheet dynamically. This is a useful feature to streamline data in a single location in a format familiar to people who prefer the interface of a spreadsheet and for those who don’t need knowledge of how to query in SQL and in BigQuery.

Before you begin, make sure you and other collaborators have access to PAD even if they don’t intend to query. Access to connected sheets is associated with the BigQuery project access provided by a PAD user account.

At this moment, only PAD users will be able to manipulate and utilize Connected Sheets that pull data from PAD projects. If you need to request a new user for your organization, please send CTA an email at help@techallies.org.

Example: How to setup Connected Sheets for a Google Public Dataset

The following instructions are found on Google Documentation using the Chicago Taxi Trip public dataset provided by Google.

1. Sign in to your PAD account.
2. Navigate to Google Drive.
3. Create or open a Sheets spreadsheet via Google Drive.
4. At the top navigation bar of the sheet, click Data then Data connectors, and Connect to BigQuery.
5. Click Get connected.
6. You'll be prompted to select a Google Cloud project that has billing enabled. If you do not see your project, contact help@techallies.org.
7. We are pulling in a Google public dataset, so next click Public datasets on the window you were prompted to select a project.
8. In the search box, type chicago and then select the chicago_taxi_trips dataset.
9. Select the taxi_trips table and then click Connect. See the image below.
   
   Data should be flowing now. Your spreadsheet should look similar to the following:
   

The data is now connected to your sheet. Connected Sheets only provide a preview of only 500 rows; however, any pivot tables, formulas, and charts use the entire set of data. If you would like to learn more, watch this Connected Sheets tutorial by Google.

Contact help@techallies.org for further questions.