Working with integrations

Learn about the different types of integrations, how to connect them and how to use their functions.

Intro

One of the coolest things about Rows is that you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to get data from pretty much anywhere on the web into a spreadsheet. With our integrations, you just need to connect to the service that you want to interact with, use one of its functions, and boom! You get results!

In this article we’ll cover:

  • Different types of integrations
  • Connecting integrations
  • Using integrations functions

Integration types

At Rows, we have three different types of integrations:

TypeDescription
InstantThese are connected by default to your account, so you can immediately start using the data. For example, Google Maps and Crunchbase.
AccountYou’ll need to log in to the service of that integration, and we’ll redirect you to your account to log in. For example, Salesforce and Slack.
APIYou’ll need to generate an API key from the service of that integration and then add it to Rows when you want to connect to that integration. For example, NewsAPI.

And it’s really easy to connect an integration:

kb-connect-integrations-newUI

Let’s go over how to get that done.

Connecting integrations

Connecting an integration couldn’t be simpler. Let’s try adding the Gmail integration:

  1. In the navigation menu on the top right, click Integrations.
  2. Search for Gmail and click on the card.
  3. In the Gmail integration description, click Connect. You can also spend a second here to look at the functions the integration has.
  4. Choose the account you want to send emails from in Rows.
  5. Authorize Rows in the next dialog box.

❇️ And that’s it! You’ve just added the Gmail integration. Now you can use all the Gmail functions in any Rows spreadsheet in your account.

Using integration functions

Using an integration function is just like using any other spreadsheet function. But, you need to really pay attention to the auto-complete to make sure that you enter the parameters correctly.

Let's try it:

  1. In cell C2 of your spreadsheet, start typing =CRUNCHBASE. In the auto-complete, choose GET_COMPANY_DETAIL_CRUNCHBASE.
  2. In the auto-complete, you’ll see that it requires some parameters to work:

kb-integration-autocomplete

It says that we need a domain_or_name and optionally, a location (we know it’s optional because it has square brackets). Now, if you remember from the last lesson, pretty much anything that’s not a number needs to be in quotation marks. If you’re unsure though, you can have a look at the examples for the parameter (it’s usually after “For example:”). If the examples have quotation marks, then you need to use them too!

  1. Type in “apple” and press Enter.
  2. And now, the cell in which you entered your function should have a {companies}.
    Cells with curly brackets like this are called {data} cells, but we’ll explain them in the next lesson

❇️ And that’s it! You just used an integration function! Instead of typing in `"apple"`, you can always reference a cell that has that content in it. Let's change our spreadsheet so that in A2 you have apple, and your function references that cell.