Community tip: connecting Zendesk and Google spreadsheets

At Control Group, we’re constantly reevaluating our own internal workflow to be more productive using the tools we already have. We create working prototypes like this as a research lab of sorts to see what potential gaps and technical debt can be removed with creative applications of technology.

Our need for a tool like this came out of being fans of two great products we use all the time: Google Apps and Zendesk. Beyond the obvious benefits of using Google for all of our email communications, we greatly benefit from shared document creation. Zendesk helps us measure our success in providing dedicated support to our variety of clients ranging from The Daily Show here in New York, to the Gagosian Gallery, with locations spanning 6 time zones.

Since our IT support doesn’t limit itself to one particular team, our use case evolved beyond the typical when it came to monitoring warranty expiration. We’ve been using Google spreadsheets to keep track of purchased items for ourselves and clients, but without some kind of automated monitoring system in place, we realized there was unnecessary reliance on someone checking the spreadsheet for warranties nearing expiration.

Hence, an idea for a tool I like to precociously refer to as Magic Ticket was born!

The latest Community Tip was brought to us by Rachel Cantor, Web Developer at Control Group, and was written based on content from their blog.