Notes from BenDesk: Accessing Stored Data without SQL

Ben is our resident ZenDesk captain and manager of all help@ inquiries. We’re bringing you interesting inquiries from his inbox each month to help share learnings across our community.

This Month’s Question: Is there an easy way to access stored data for someone who doesn’t know SQL?

BenDesk Answer: While having your data in a warehouse and accessible using SQL provides powerful data capabilities for your program, we know that can be intimidating to organizers or strategists who may be new to SQL. PAD and BigQuery offer an option for interacting with your data right in Google Sheets and in real-time: Connected Sheets.

Connected Sheets is a feature that allows users to access, analyze, and visualize data from PAD through a spreadsheet. This is particularly useful when sharing data with people who are accustomed to producing pivot tables and roll-ups in spreadsheets but may not be able to or want to work in BigQuery. Connected Sheets (and any summary tabs built off of them) are fully dynamic and reflect exactly the data in the BigQuery warehouse. This means that organizers can work in spreadsheets that show the same reality as the tables the data team is querying. No need to run daily exports or worry about differing sources of truth.

For more information on how to set up a Connected Sheet, you can check out our knowledge base article here. Do you have a question for BenDesk and the team? Partners can submit their asks to help@techallies.org.