With the release of 1.5 we have included a plug-in for Google Docstm which will allow you to use data directly from a Google spreadsheet. As you may or may not know Google have developed a neat way of gathering form and survey information into a Google spreadsheet. For a quick overview of the technology take a look at this video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzgaUOW6GIs
or this article from the Google Docs site...
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/02/stop-sharing-spreadsheets-start.html
You might also want to take a look at the introductory webcast for this plug-in at http://www.inforama.org/web/guest/resources/webcasts
In this example we will show how to work with the data that's been collected in the 'User Registrations' spreadsheet shown in figure 1 below.
Figure 1 - The User Registrations spreadsheet
You can see an example of the form that was used to gather this data here. Feel free to fill it out if you want to keep updated about Inforama and the Google Docs integration as it progresses.
Getting Started
In order to get started with the Google Docs plug-in download version 1.5 of Inforama from SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/inforama/files/
Once installed you will see a 'plugins' folder in the Inforama application directory. Download the Google Docs plug-in zip file from SourceForge and extract it to the plugins directory. If Inforama is already running close it, restart it and create a new project.
Create a data source
Click the Data - Connections/Datasources... menu item to open the DataSources dialog shown in figure 2 below.
Figure 2 - The Google Docs data source
The Google Docs data source now appears in the list of available datasources. Select the Google Docs datasource type and click the next button.
The next dialog shown in figure 3 shows where you enter details of the Google Docs spreadsheet that you wish to use. Begin by giving your data source a name that will be used in your Inforama project. Next enter your Google Docs username and password. Click the List Spreadsheets button and all of the spreadsheets available in your Google Docs account will be listed.
Figure 3 - Selecting the spreadsheet which will be used
Create a dataset
Next you want to create a dataset that will retrieve a subset of the data from your data source. To do this open the datasets dialog shown in figure 4. In this case we're going to mailshot all of the users in the spreadsheet so you can just enter a name for the dataset and click the execute button. A list of fields from the spreadsheet will be returned in the list on the right of the dialog. Click the save button to save the dataset.
Figure 4 - Creating a dataset to be used in the project documents
This new Google Docs dataset can be used in the same way as any other dataset in Inforama.
If you want to filter the data in the spreadsheet you can enter a simple clause in the SQL field in the dialog. For example you could use the clause email=info@inforama.org or index=${index}. In this case ${index} is a parameter that will be provided to the Inforama engine prior to processing.
You can use it to run mailshots with or without PDF attachments as described in the tutorial at http://www.inforama.org/web/guest/community/wiki/-/wiki/Main/1.3+Mailshot+Dialog
You can use it to create dynamic tables in your documents as described in the tutorial at http://www.inforama.org/web/guest/community/wiki/-/wiki/Main/6+-+Table+Iterations
This is our first step in working with Google Docs and we intend to develop more integrations with it in upcoming versions of Inforama. We created this plug-in for Inforama using Inforama's plug-in architecture. You may be interested in downloading the source code for this plug-in in order to see how the Inforama plug-in architecture is used or to see how to work with Google Docs from Java.
If you're interested in getting more information about this plug-in and further integration with Google Docs click the link at the bottom of this page and fill out the Google Form.
