Embedding the Google Spreadsheet into your blog

At this point, it should be clear that your blog is not just a blog but a distribution carrier for your information services and communication functions. It is a small information system. Here you can control access to various subsystems on your blog (like analytical spreadsheet services or database selections - another topic of the final week). Each of such data services can allow access to information for different customers or departments since there could be many spreadsheets and database tables for various data sources and functional services: HR, accounting, R&D, and many other projects/functions. More than that. You can allow for each data service embedded into your blog (spreadsheet, database, RSS links and many others) to have other team members to have access not only for reading but for editing, thus supporting collaboration in project teams.


Important to note that Google Drive is a cloud-based service (similar to Zoho) which means that all hardware, availability, and scalability headaches are resolved without you having an IT department doing this job. If one computer or connection go down - they automatically switch to other resources. If your delivery time to the client on another continent is too big - they will use resources closer to that country thus minimizing the connection time. If the number of your customers using your small IS will suddenly grow dramatically - cloud services will scale automatically to many computers and Internet channels. All these operations would normally require you to create a small company with an IT department just to maintain your blog-based information services. Now with free cloud-based support - you can run your start-up for free. Until... there is a need in more people/agents supporting their local databases and analytical spreadsheet services. Such local resources could be integrated on your blog (you just need the embedding link from them) allowing a big distributed company to view their operations on such integral view as your blog as well as provide the necessary decision-making and information support for your customers. For example sharing orders from other stores in the chain, managing hotel branches, etc .


Of course, there are other means of integrating information subsystems like  creating full-fledged web sites, but for the purpose of the course, this simple bog-based IS could serve as a useful hands-on experience in using the theory of the book and the skills obtained in weekly labs.


So in order to embed your spreadsheet (I assume that you develop it in Google Drive or Docs) into the blog, do the following:

1. Get for your Google Drive spreadsheet the public link (chose Share, Get shareable link and the option "Anyone with the link") for the post in the Spreadsheet forum which might look like:


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aslm8JDe-wu4dGpYMnRQZVE2VFJpbFhGRFJwUnFESVE&usp=sharing&authkey=CJuj58UF


2. Although you can use the Google Docs' mechanism of creating an iframe for embedding into the blogs from File, Publish to the web menu of your sheet, I will additionally show a general method of creating an iframe (an embedding mechanism) by surrounding any shareable link with iframe tags and parameters like shown below (you can copy them from me to surround your link in the iframe). Pay attention to all parts ADDED to the link mentioned above:

<iframe frameborder=0 width='600' height='300' src= 'https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aslm8JDe-wu4dGpYMnRQZVE2VFJpbFhGRFJwUnFESVE&usp=sharing&authkey=CJuj58UF'></iframe>

Here you see that the embedding iframe text INCLUDES the link, which could be found inside for your further use, or be surrounded by the iframe parameters to serve the site/blog embedding.
For the task you can use either Google Docs method of getting an iframe from File, Publish to the web menu of your sheet or use the manual way of creating the iframe from the link manually.

3. Create a new HTML/JavaScript gadget in your blog, give it a name and paste the created iframe there. Move the gadget to the bigger part of your blog (which is usually the left one).


4. You might want to adjust width and height parameters in the iframe by clicking on the edit icon under the embedded gadget on your blog. But note that you can switch sheets and scroll.


Note: sometimes it might not work and sometimes the working embedded spreadsheet stops working. This might be caused by periodic Google's reluctance in allowing embedding. Then do the following:


Use Zoho to recreate the same what you did in Google (create a spreadsheet) and then click Share, Embed and get the iframe!

See examples of embedding from Google Drive (more complicated sheet) and Zoho on this blog