Google Bucket allows you to store participant data from your Playable campaigns in Google Cloud. Through our built-in integration, you can automate the data transfer between Playable and Google Bucket.
In this article, we'll explore the process of configuring the Google Bucket integration in the platform. We will cover how to:
Add the Google Bucket Integration
To find the integration, go into the 'Integrations' tab on your campaign and select 'Add Integration.' In the following menu, select 'Storage' and select the Google Bucket option. This will start the setup process.
Google Bucket connects to Playable through Google service account credentials in JSON-format.This means that, if you are adding the integration for the first time, you will need to insert this information from your Google Bucket account.
If you have previously set up a Google Bucket integration in Playable, you can reuse the configuration.
In order to use the Google Bucket integration, you will need a Google service account. In case you don't already have a Google service account, we recommend checking out Google's guide on creating a Google service account. If you do have an account, you will need to create credentials in JSON-format for the account. A guide for doing that can also be found in Google's documentation.
Configure the Google Bucket Integration
Once you have connected the integration to your Google service account, you can start configuring what data should be sent from Playable to Google Bucket. The first section is 'General integration settings.' Here, you can find some some general settings such as changing the Google service account, rerunning the registrations, only transferring one registration per user, or type casting the data values.
The next section, 'Integration Setup', lets you define
What event should trigger the data transfer
How often the data should be transferred to Google Bucket
How the file containing the data should be formatted
What data should be mapped
Which field(s) data should be mapped to
Be advised that you must select an event for the rest of the options to become visible.
Event type
The first option you get for each integration setup is the event type. Here you can choose between 'Form Fields' and 'Advanced'.
Form fields
Choosing the first option means that the integration will be triggered when a specific form field is filled. Often this would be the terms and conditions checkbox, but it can be any of the fields in your form.
Advanced
The advanced options will let you trigger the integration based on a date range, time range, specific answers in the form, GET parameters (variables passed via the URL) and bulk prize status.
The advanced options can be mixed and used in conjunction with each other. This gives you greater flexibility, but more often than not the regular 'Form fields' option is enough if you simply want to get all data transferred to your systems.
Date Range | Lets you specify that only registrations made between two dates should be transferred. |
Time Range | Can be used in conjunction with Date Range to further specify required data |
Form Field(s) | Lets you specify specific values entered into the form fields. For example, only transferring registrations with the name "John" in the 'name' field. |
GET parameters | Lets you grab parameters from the URL and use these as a transfer-event. For example you can choose to only trigger the integration when "?customer=YES" is present in the URL. |
Bulk Prizes | Lets you specify only to transfer registrations of participants who won / did not win a bulk prize. |
Interval settings
Next, you need to decide how often the integration should run. Here you have three options: daily, hourly, or every 15 minutes. The daily and hourly options will let you define specific days of the week or hours of the day.
Type
Daily
Hourly
15 min interval
This will determine how often the file is sent to your Google Bucket. When choosing Daily, the default is that it would transfer the file every day at 1 am the next day. It is also possible to only sent on specific weekdays. The same goes for Hourly, the default is 1 am, but it can be changed if that is necessary.
File settings
Here, you will configure the file which is being sent to Google Bucket at your chosen interval. This includes selecting which bucket to send it to, how the file should be formatted, and the name of the file.
Map data fields
You will "map" each field from your campaign to a field in Google Bucket using drop-down menus. This drop-down is how you select where in Google Bucket the data should be sent.
For each data point, you can select the name to give the corresponding column in the header row. Unlike other integrations, where you have to select existing fields from the receiving end, because the data is simply being sent as a CSV file, you will have to manually define the headers this way in the Google Bucket integration.
At the bottom of this section, you can add static information if you want to track something that is true for every player but is not collected in the campaign automatically.
For example, you can use static information if you want to track Playable as the user "source" in your database.
Once you enter a static value, you can map the field as you would with any other data field.
Custom fields
Custom fields allow you to customize the fields included in the CSV file.
When setting up custom fields, you will need to enter:
Name: Will be used to map the custom field to a field in the registration form
Value: Will be the header in the CSV file
The values in the CSV file will then be whatever the user filled out in the corresponding field in the registration form.
Test and troubleshoot the integration
We always advise that you test the integration by going through the actual campaign. The testing process will depend on what your triggers are, but we suggest that you test by submitting the registration form(s) and playing through the game.
In the activity tab, you will be able to check if the data has successfully been transferred to Google Bucket.
To learn more about how to test the integration, please read this Help Center article.