Sync: Building digital business cards at scale from a Google Sheet

“Sync” is a feature that allows one to build and manage digital business cards from a Google Sheet. It is perfect making cards for teams or for the entire staff at a company and has the unique quality of giving you a free hand in designing the best possible card for your business.

The operation is straightforward:

• Set up a template app (i.e. digital card) for your organization and customize it to your branding and desired functionality.
• Complete a Google sheet with the profile information for each employee or agent
• Sync the two from the "Sync" tab of the template app to create new personalized digital business cards for each employee listed in the Google Sheet.
• Manage card updates by updating the Sheet and then syncing again.

(A best practice is to use the same name for both the sheet and the template app) 

             

Below is a sample template sheet and the URL of a companion app. Replace the example data with your data. 

Template Sheet URL:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Su_exW8wCH7cOLVy-yf98vziMSLskvBzUmLkJVp0Qmc/edit?usp=sharing

And here is a URL for a sample template app, but remember that any app can be a template so don't be limited by the design functionality of this template.

Template App URL:

    https://agentapp.to/Donna-Brown

For the Actions in the template that will be unique for each employee, such as tap-to-call, be sure and use the Action's "data tab" option so that it gets its data from the profile stored in each app. The sync function updates these profiles from the Sheet.

Setting up the Sheet

The first five column headers (highlighted in blue) are organizational and must be in your sheet in the same order. 

• Sync - Determines if the row will be read to create or update an app when the sheet is synced.
  • “Yes” means the row will be synced 
• Delete - Determines if the app will be deleted from the account.
  • “Yes” will remove the app from the account
• App ID - Enter the desired alphanumeric ID for the app.
• Pub - Determines whether the app will be published
  • “Yes” will publish the app and "No" will unpublish it
• Folder - Determines if the app will be placed in it's own folder partition.
  • "Yes" will create a folder.
  • Note that if you are using folders, you must also check the "shared" tag on the Actions in the template app, or syncing will create all new actions for each app.
  • You can invite an employee to have a login to their folder and they will be able to see their metrics.

After the first 5 columns, the column headers match the corresponding fields in the app's data tab. The field names must match those in the sample sheet, but the order does not matter after the first 5. You can delete columns for fields you are not using to simplify your Sheet.

Images

The Sheet requires a direct URL in a cell for images. The "share" link from Google drive will not work becasue it is not a direct link. Options that will work are:

• Load an image into a image action on the platform and then right click teh image in its preveiw to get its URL.
• Use an image hosting service such as "freeimage.host" to host images and provide links.

Syncing

When you Sync with a sheet, you wil be required to log into the Google acccount hosting the Sheet and then to select the correct Sheet.

          

Important notes:

• Apps created using "Sync" will inheret the actions and setup of the template app. For example, if the template app uses the company logo for the app icon rather than the employee profile, then the new apps will also.
• If you want to update the branding of all your digital business cards, then update the template card and re-sync.
• Updating an existing action on the template app, such as the lead form, will immediately update the lead forms on apps, without syncing.
• Only the account owner has the permision level required to sync an app to a Sheet.