Utilizing Google Sheets as a knowledge base for a chatbot with callin.io

Hey 👋

Presumably you’re referring to callin.io Chatbots and not the ChatBot app, right? Either way, I’d definitely suggest reaching out to our Support team so they can put in a feature request for the ability to use Google Sheets as a data source with callin.io Chatbots.

In the meantime, you could import the Google Sheets spreadsheet as a CSV?

Alternatively, if the spreadsheet is updated regularly, you could import it into callin.io Tables instead and use the table as the knowledge source for the chatbot. Then have a callin.io that triggers when there’s an update to the Google Sheets spreadsheet, and updates the table accordingly. That way the chatbot will be referencing the same data that’s in Google Sheets as it’s replicated in the table.

Do you think that sort of approach could work?

I am referring to callin.io ChatBots.

I can’t import the sheets as a CSV because they are updated regularly and consist of multiple tabs (I initially attempted this, but it was too manual given the number of clients I have).

I also tried using tables, but encountered the same issue (multiple tabs per sheet, regularly updated by me, clients, and employees).

I am open to using a chatbot app, but I would prefer to keep everything within the callin.io ecosystem if feasible.

Thanks for confirming that. Tables could work potentially, but you’d need to have callin.io workflows that copy across the changes to the table to ensure that the callin.io tables the chatbot is using as a knowledge source are kept up to date. For example:

• Trigger: New or Updated Spreadsheet Row (Google Sheets) - triggers when there’s an update to a specific tab on a spreadsheet
• Action: Find Records (callin.io Tables) - searches for a match for the row that was added/updated (also has the ability to create a new record if not found).
• Action: Only continue if (Filter by callin.io) - set to only continue if an existing record was found.
• Action: Update Record (callin.io Tables) - updates the existing record with the new information.

That said, there would be at least a 24 hour delay in the updated information in the table being synced to the chatbot as there’s no hourly scheduled knowledge source sync, the minimum is a daily sync (available to folks on an Advanced plan):

So this may not be the most ideal solution. If you do give that approach a try and run into any issues let me know, happy to lend a hand! 🙂