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Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#21

Post by bdcravens »

nickgervasi wrote: post #19
bdcravens wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from draggable cards and swimlanes, Trello doesn't make for a great solution where you need to store structured data, especially if you need to additionally query or filter on that data. Probably far easier to just build out a visualization and keep the data in the spreadsheet. I tend to store status in a dropdown in the spreadsheet, and color-code the row based on status.

I see. I haven't used it myself, but I know Trello has a custom fields feature to add structured data to each card ( https://help.trello.com/article/1067-using-the-custom-fields... ). Are you the only one working out of this spreadsheet or do you share it with others?

In this instance, it's just me, but I've used shared spreadsheets on Google with no issues.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#22

Post by nickgervasi »

saradhi wrote: post #11

We, extracttable.com, use Google Spreadsheets, a minimal, to save the signup via Google Forms which is also linked to an endpoint using the app scripts to generate an API key. The biggest workflow I witnessed is from our user, a financial intelligence platform from Brazil, which initially takes data from images and do a manual entry to spreadsheets, has a significant pipeline with as many as 200+ macros defined for t…

extracttable.com looks cool! Looking forward to reading the Show HN post!

Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#23

Post by nickgervasi »

bdcravens wrote: post #14

I use it as a great way to share data from ad-hoc queries, and often times can drive a quick workflow without having to build out a full set of screens in our line of business app. On a personal level, despite many attempts to find a perfect app, my relatively simple set of budgeting spreadsheets is still the best solution I've ever come up with. Not Google Sheets, but the president of our company has been able to bu…

"I use it as a great way to share data from ad-hoc queries" So you run some database queries, copy/paste the results in Google Sheets, then share them with other folks on the team? What do they do with the data? How often are you generating these query results?

"A working spreadsheet is definitely the best requirements doc in the world" +1. I had a summer job in high school writing small programs for a local business, one of which was a tool to manage their workplace injury claims. Previously they were calculating everything in Excel, so translating that into a VB6 app was really straight forward.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#24

Post by nickgervasi »

harrydehal wrote: post #13

For a fun side project, I decided to use Google Sheets as a database that would be easily editable by the general public (non-developers). It is currently populating data for a crowdsourced map of San Francisco Bay Area third-wave coffee roasters: https://hdehal.github.io/coffee-maps I was able to quickly get the app created in React, and while Google Sheets has extensive API docs ( https://developers.google.com/shee…

That's pretty cool! I was recently looking at Google's API docs as well, but I'll definitely check out node-google-spreadsheet.

One thing I could never figure out from Google's API docs is whether you can retrieve the revision history of a particular cell? Going out on a limb here, but has anyone had any luck with this?

Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#25

Post by nickgervasi »

bdcravens wrote: post #21
nickgervasi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. I haven't used it myself, but I know Trello has a custom fields feature to add structured data to each card ( https://help.trello.com/article/1067-using-the-custom-fields... ). Are you the only one working out of this spreadsheet or do you share it with others?

In this instance, it's just me, but I've used shared spreadsheets on Google with no issues.

Got it. Transparently, I've been working on a tool called Flowdash (https://flowdash.com) that helps bring structured data to workflows like this. I'd love to get your feedback since it sounds like you're pretty familiar with the problem.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#28

Post by eel »

In my personal life, I use Google Sheets to help me shop for larger purchases. For example, choosing tires for my car. I made a spreadsheet of all the available tires that fit my car, with columns for specs, prices of different retailers, user review numbers, and government ratings. Then I filter what's important to me and calculate my own rating based on the remaining columns.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#29

Post by nickgervasi »

rasulkireev wrote: post #27

I use Sheets for personal data tracking, for content planning, for making quick financial projections, etc, etc, etc. Would be easily top used tool for me if it wasn't blocked on the company level where I work.

Interesting- why is it blocked at work?

Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#30

Post by obviyus »

nickgervasi wrote: post #18
obviyus wrote: post #9

I use one sheet every day to track my time. It’s simple enough with 24 x 365 cells for each year’s sheet. It takes me around 30s a day to fill it out. It’s mostly guesstimating what I was doing during the day. It’s a fun way to look back on my week. I honestly think this is one of the most impactful things I’ve done to reduce wasting my time.

That's great. Do you use a consistent naming scheme or categories to help aggregate data?

Yep! Every cell can hold values from a list. You can read more about it from where I originally found it: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/5lh6tc/eve...
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