Lucid's Google Sheets integrations- Permissions too broad

Hi @gmattw, thanks for your post! Unfortunately, this more specific permission isn’t currently supported in Lucid, but we’re very interested in your feedback and committed to continually improving our products. If you’re willing to share, we’d love to hear more details about your use case or what you’d like to see in this experience within this thread. I’ve also converted this post to an idea so that it’s visible to others within the Product Feedback section of the community - from here, they can upvote it and add details of their own.

Finally, for more information on how Lucid manages feedback via this community, take a look at this post:

One further request for you, @gmattw - I’ve gone ahead and raised this internally with our product team, and if you’re willing and able, a screen recording of the exact flow you’re going through followed by the blocked request that you’re seeing would be very helpful!

Hi Micah.

Thanks for the response! 

I’ve not used the plugins yet but I have a pretty simple desire & I could be interested in a more complex integration depending on what each plugin does. 

My use case:

1. I have a LucidChart which is useful for visual management of work (Kanban style) and also for stickes. Dropping tasks visually. What I’d like is the ability to have a tab within a spreadsheet that I have in a Google Sheet display in a table within LucidChart so I don’t have to switch back and forth to view items and ideally update the spreadsheet through Lucid.
2. I might be interested in the ability to do a card integration (or possibly stickies) with a google sheet so that it maps each row into a card. When I update a row in the spreadhseet, (status, next steps, etc) it would auto reflect in the stickies on a Kanban or other visual board. 

Use case #1 is the most important and simple. 

I’ve installed these pluguins. I go to a google sheet & I copy the link to share it & I try to paste it into the LucidChart. When I do that, it tells me that I need to authenticate and tries to pull up the Google authentication but that’s where it’s blocked.

I was told by my IT team that when I paste this link into LucidChart, it is blocked because it’s asking for FULL access to my Google drive. To every file that I hold in Google Drive/Sheets, etc. 

They said that the full access isn’t allowed for any application & that the application needs to authenticate in the manner described before which will only grant access to only individual Google sheets that have been explicitly shared. 

Hope that makes sense. If you still need more info, perhaps we can connect outside of the forum and I can get you a recording to demonstrate the behavior. 

Thanks again!

Hi @gmattw, thanks again for such a detailed response - so helpful!

Regarding your use case and the features it requires:

1.  It sounds like you want to import a Google sheet into the canvas and have that available in Lucidchart, along with the ability to push changes made in Lucidchart back into Google Sheets. Our Data Linking tool can perform the former, and our newly released Google Sheets two-way-sync beta can perform the latter. For full information about the beta, I recommend our Data Trusted User Group. Additionally, this force link will automatically put you on the beta. However, this does require the broader scopes for collaboration purposes. If you import data into your document, then share that document with another Lucidchart user, this other user wouldn’t have also permitted access to the same spreadsheet, preventing Google from sharing the data to the document. 
2. I think our Lucid Cards for Google Sheets integration might meet your needs here! However, if you’re simply pasting the URL to a Google sheet onto your canvas, you’re likely experiencing the functionality of the Google Sheets Embedded Links tool. For this second integration, however, we do request the broader https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.readonly scope. 

Hi Micah!

Thanks for the info. 

On the 1st link, I joined the beta group just now but I don’t see any info on how to install the beta version of the integration. Do you have a link to instructions? 

It sounds like the permissions for all the Google Sheets plugins that were noted require full access to  all docs in Google Drive today. Did I understand that correctly? 

In my case, I would grant users on my team access to a LucidChart & a Google Sheet separately. I would prefer that LucidChart use the Google ID of the user that’s logging into LucidChart to access all resources including any embedded links to Google Sheets. I’d be okay with them getting a permissions error or the link for them to request access to the Google Sheet.

This seems like a better idea than LucidChart having full access to all my Google Docs and granting user access based on who I share a LucidChart with. 

Thanks again.

@gmattw Your summary is correct - broader scopes are required here, but I will certainly raise this and your ideal flow with our product team as feedback. The Data TUG that you joined is an especially great place for this kind of discussion, too, as our product managers that work on these exact flows are actively making improvements to these areas and would be grateful to connect with you. 

If you’re still interested in further exploring the two-way sync functionality, the URL I hyperlinked to “this force link” will automatically give you that ability within your Lucid account - no action necessary on your part beyond clicking on it. I’ll include it again here for your convenience!