SmartSYNC: Using Google Docs, Groups, Sheets, Places and other services

SmartSYNC: Using Google Docs, Groups, Sheets, Places and other services

Get an API KEY or OAUTH credentials

You will need an API key or OAUTH credentials to use Google APIs and Services from SmartSYNC. The process of creating these is the same for all of Googles' API based services.
  1. Go to the Google API Console.
  2. From the projects list, select a project or create a new one.
  3. If the APIs & services page isn't already open, open the left side menu (the three horizontal lines icon) and select APIs & services.
  4. You will see the currently enabled APIs on the Dashboard. If any that you require are missing (see below list) then click 'Enable APIs and Services'
  5. You now select the various APIs. Search for the API by name, then click on it and click Enable. Repeat for the other APIs you need to enable.
    1. Google Docs Connector: Google Drive API, Google Docs API
    2. Google Groups Connector: Admin SDK
    3. Google Sheets Connector: Google Drive API, Google Sheets API
    4. Google API Connector: Places API
    5. Gmail Connector: Gmail API
  6. On the left, choose Credentials.
  7. Click Create credentials and then:
    1. Places API: Select API key and copy the generated key to use in your Connector.
    2. All other APIs: Select OAUTH client ID and follow the process as outlined below

OAUTH client ID Process

This is slightly more involved than an API key but again does not take long to do. 

First you build your consent screen:
  1. Select Internal
  2. Application Name: SmartSYNC
  3. Authorised domains: smartsync.org
  4. Application Homepage link: http://www.smartsync.org/
  5. Application Privacy Policy link: https://smartsync.org/app/privacy.php
  6. Application Terms of Service link: https://smartsync.org/app/terms.php
  7. Scopes for Google APIs: Click Add Scope and make sure you have selected for all connectors:
    ./auth/userinfo.email, ./auth/userinfo.profile, openid
    and then also the below specific scopes:
    1. Gmail connector: ./auth/gmail.send, ./auth/gmail.modify, ./auth/gmail.labels
    2. Google Sheets connector: ./auth/spreadsheets, ./auth/drive.readonly
    3. Google Groups: ./auth/admin.directory.group
    4. Google Docs: ./auth/documents, ./auth/drive.readonly
Then you create your OAUTH client ID credentials:
  1. Return to the 'Credentials' page
  2. Click 'Create Credentials' and 'OAuth client ID'
  3. Select 'Web application' and provide a name such as 'Gmail Connection'
  4. Under 'Authorised redirect URIs' add the URL for your SmartSYNC service which will be one of the below. You can determine this by your geographical location, accessing SmartSYNC or contacting our support team:
    1. https://smartsync.org/app/connect/success (covers UK and EU customers)
    2. https://au.smartsync.org/app/connect/success (covers NZ, AU and Pacific based customers)
    3. https://us.smartsync.org/app/connect/success (covers the United States, Canada and the american continent)
    4. or, for own server installs https://client-xxx.smartsync.org/app/connect/success (replace xxx with your SmartSYNC install domain)
  5. Please also always add the URL https://dev.smartsync.org/app/connect/success
  6. Note your Client ID and Client Secret, you will need these when creating your Connector in SmartSYNC.

Using one project

We suggest you have one project for your organisation and under that you enable all the relevant APIs that you want to use. You can then under that project create various credentials (API Keys and OAUTH client IDs) for the various parts of the SmartSYNC integration i.e. one OAUTH Client ID for the Gmail connector. 

This approach means that when you want to start using another connector you just enable the relevant APIs and Services, and then create a new OAUTH client ID with the new scopes.

Google Billing

We do not charge you for using Google's services, they would bill you under your Google account for any costs you incur. Some APIs and Services require you to enable billing in your Google Console account, for others this just increases your daily API calls allowance. In general we do suggest enabling billing as in most cases you will not hit any paid levels of usage. You can in fact set limits in the Quotas area of the API as per https://cloud.google.com/apis/docs/capping-api-usage to ensure you remain in the free usage limits.

Having said all that you currently get a credit of $200 to your Google API account per month for free. That is then used for the services you utilise so each is a charge against the $200 monthly credit.

As an example If you use our Google API Connector > Google Address Parser tool then that, for each address processed, will call the Places Search and then the Places Detail APIs so Google would charge $0.032 for the Places Search plus $0.017 for the Places Details call making $0.049 per address. If you have $200 and you only use Google APIs for this service then that will give you $200/$0.049 approximately 4000 searches a month for free.

You can monitor usage on the Google API Console and track billing there as well.

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