Is this an official add-on by Google?

[Stephen Roda]

Hi there,

Long story short, I love this add-on and I see so many future opportunities for dashboards, website scoring templates, and more. With the data from Analytics and the power of Sheets, the possibilities are almost endless. So far I've built a completely custom, automated reporting system and I'm only looking to expand.

I have a few questions, hopefully nothing too comprehensive.

• Is this an official Google add-on?
• Will the add-on be around for years to come?
• Will it be updated to keep up with changes to the Analytics API?
• If this add-on is ever dropped, is there a manual solution to make API calls to Analytics and import the data into Google Sheets?

I hope I'm not insinuating that this tool will ever be dropped because it's fantastic, but if I'm going to invest hundreds of hours into developing a full, ever-expanding reporting system, I'd like to know all worst case scenarios.

Thank you :)

[Philip Walton]

Hey Stephen, good questions.

On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 11:10 AM, Stephen Roda <sjr...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi there,

Long story short, I love this add-on and I see so many future opportunities for dashboards, website scoring templates, and more. With the data from Analytics and the power of Sheets, the possibilities are almost endless. So far I've built a completely custom, automated reporting system and I'm only looking to expand.

I have a few questions, hopefully nothing too comprehensive.

• Is this an official Google add-on?

Yes, this is an official Google add-on, which you can tell because it has the "G" icon next to it when viewing it in the add-ons gallery. But being an official Google add-on just means it was created by people who work at Google and it went through a release process at Google and got the proper sign-offs and whatnot.

Being an official Google add-on *doesn't not* mean that this is an official offering in the Google Analytics product line. It also doesn't mean the add-on comes with a service-level agreement (SLA).

• Will the add-on be around for years to come?
• Will it be updated to keep up with changes to the Analytics API?

The add-on does not have an SLA, which means we can't make guarantees about it being maintained. If you only want to use tech with an SLA, you might want to look into Data Studio.

• If this add-on is ever dropped, is there a manual solution to make API calls to Analytics and import the data into Google Sheets?

Again, we can't make any guarantees. I'm the creator and sole maintainer of the add-on, and if I were ever not able to maintain it (and if no one else wanted to take it over), I'd try very hard to get it released as open source, but of course I obviously can't make any guarantees to that either.

However, it's important to understand that the add-on doesn't uses any technology that's not publicly available to any third-party developer. The add-on requests data from Google Analytics via the core reporting API, which anyone can use, and it formats the data in the Sheet using apps-scripts, which also anyone can use.

I hope I'm not insinuating that this tool will ever be dropped because it's fantastic, but if I'm going to invest hundreds of hours into developing a full, ever-expanding reporting system, I'd like to know all worst case scenarios.

Thank you :)

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[Stephen Roda]

Thanks Philip! That answers all my questions.

I understand that you can't make any guarantees about maintaining the add-on, but it's reassuring that it's been around for quite a while and you seem to be on top of it. It really makes Google Analytics so much more powerful and expansive and I would be very surprised if it was ever dropped (in the event that you couldn't maintain it any longer).

It's also good to know that in the absolute worst case scenario, it can be rebuilt with the core reporting API and apps-scripts.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions :)