Hey everyone! I just wanted to share a really neat setup I’ve been working on. It’s all about keeping track of when people unlock our front door, and I’ve managed to do it without any third-party services. Let me walk you through how I did it using Rule Machine and Google Sheets.
First off, I created a new Google Sheet and set up a form with short answer text fields. This was super straightforward—just a few clicks in Google Sheets. The form collects the date, time, name, and action (like unlocking the door). I also made sure to get the pre-filled link from the form, which is essential for the next steps.
Next, I extracted the sheet ID from the URL. This is the string of characters before the last slash in the URL. Once I had that, I moved over to Rule Machine. I set up a rule that triggers whenever the lock is used. The rule captures the current date, time, and the name of the person who unlocked the door.
The magic happens with a form-encoded POST request to Google Forms. I configured the rule to send the data to the form’s response URL. The body of the POST request includes the entries from the form, each separated by an ampersand. It looks something like this:
entry.11111111111=%date%&entry.2222222222=%now%&entry.33333333333=%name%&entry.444444444=%action%
After setting everything up, I ran the rule to test it out. Voilà! The data showed up in the Google Sheet’s “Form Responses” tab. It’s so satisfying to see everything log automatically without any extra steps.
What I love most about this setup is that it’s direct and fast. No need to rely on services like IFTTT or others. It’s been running smoothly for a while now, and I’ve saved so much time compared to manually logging everything.
If anyone has questions or wants to troubleshoot, feel free to reach out! I’d be happy to help. Happy automating everyone! 