Zapier: Add files from google drive to board

Platform discussions monday apps & integrations
1

Hi,

we’re using Google Drive to manage our shared files. At the same time, we’d like to have them listed in Monday as well, so the team has a single point of entry.

Our current approach is a dedicated board for documents, which only has a name and a file column. The file column links to the documents in Google Drive.

Now it’s additional work to add a new item manually for every new file in Drive. So I wanted to use zapier.com to build an automation that creates an item in the documents board in monday every time a new file is added to Drive. In Zapier I have a single field “Column Values” that takes a JSON structure. However, the linked developer docs did not give any information about how that structure should look like for adding an entry in the file column that links to GDrive the same way manually adding a file does.

Can you help me with this? Or is this currently not possible using the API?

Thanks,
Frederik

2

Hi @Frederik,

Currently you aren’t able to load a file to a column using a link. I.e a Google Doc. You are only able to upload a physical file.

You would need to load the file contents into memory (likely on a server) and then load this file into monday via the API.

I am not sure how you would be able to implement this in Zapier, it would be easier using the monday Apps Framework for this use case.

3

Thank you, @mitchell.hudson!

So I guess that’s a limitation of the current API? The drawback of that approach is that the file would not reflect changes made to the Google Doc, so that’s not an option. So I guess we’ll have to do it manually ATM.

4

@Frederik

Correct, it is a limitation at this stage.

Your alternative is to use a ‘link’ column and then set the link to the URL of the Google Doc.

You wouldn’t need to worry about changing files, as the link would take the user to the most up to date version