Google Workspace

Paste any Google Workspace link onto a board and it becomes a link card. That is the default, it works on private files, and for most teams it is the whole feature.

A document a team has deliberately published to the web can additionally sit on a board as a live panel. That requires making the published copy readable by anyone with the link, so it suits some teams and not others. Link cards are covered first below because they are the option that is always correct.

Link cards

Paste a link to a Google Doc, Sheet, Slide deck, Form, Drawing, Drive file or Drive folder and it becomes a card showing the product’s own icon and colours, with the file name where the URL carries one.

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This works on private and organisation-restricted files, which is the case most link previews get wrong.

Google only publishes Open Graph tags for files shared publicly. For a department’s restricted document, an ordinary link preview fetches a sign-in page instead, so the card arrives blank and falls back to the raw URL. Even on public files, the preview image Google advertises is a short-lived signed URL that stops working for anyone who is not the file’s owner.

Bizby reads the link itself rather than fetching it, so the card is correct for every sharing state, renders with no network call, and keeps working in board exports and offline.

Nothing is sent to Google, and Bizby never sees the file’s contents. The card is built entirely from the URL.

Live embeds, for documents you have published

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Read this before using embeds. Publishing a document to the web makes that copy readable by anyone with the link, separately from the file’s own sharing. It is not controlled by your organisation’s Drive permissions and it is not restricted to your domain.

If a document is confidential, internal, or covered by a records or privacy obligation, leave it as a link card. Publish only when you are content for the contents to be read outside your organisation, and un-publish from the same menu when you are done.

Where that is acceptable, a published document sits on a board as a panel you resize and move like any other shape, showing the live file rather than a card.

Product	What to paste
Google Docs	File → Share → Publish to web, then paste the published link.
Google Sheets	The same, from the spreadsheet’s File menu.
Google Slides	The same, for a deck.
Google Calendar	A calendar’s public embed URL, from its settings.
Google Maps	A map or a Street View location.

An embed is read-only. It shows the published copy, which Google re-renders from the original, so it is not somewhere to type.

A sheet keeps what you published. If you published a single worksheet or a cell range, the panel shows that worksheet and that range, not the whole file.

Why an unpublished document stays a card

This is deliberate rather than a limitation we have not got to.

Google can show a private file inside another page, but only by using the viewer’s own Google session, and in an embedded frame that session is a third-party cookie. Browsers increasingly block those, and when they do Google cannot tell who is asking: the panel shows “Can’t access your Google Account” instead of the document. It fails for the person looking at the board rather than the person who added it, so the board would look right to its author and broken to everybody else.

A link card works for everyone, in every browser, in every sharing state.

Export results to Google Sheets

Right-click a poll or a frame, choose Export as > Google Sheets, and Bizby creates a new spreadsheet in your own Google Drive holding the same rows as the CSV export: a poll’s question, status, option counts and shares, or a frame’s text with its voting results beside it. A link to open the sheet appears when it is ready.

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Results are tallies, never ballots. The sheet shows how many people chose each option, not who chose what, exactly like the CSV.

The first time, Google asks you to allow Bizby to create files in your Drive. That permission is Google’s narrowest Drive scope, drive.file: it reaches only the files Bizby creates or that you open with it. Bizby cannot see, list or read anything else in your Drive.

• The new sheet is yours, in your Drive, under your organisation’s sharing rules. Bizby does not share it with anyone.
• The access Google grants is held in your browser tab for about an hour and is never stored by Bizby or sent to its servers. The spreadsheet is created directly between your browser and Google.
• When that access expires, the next export asks Google again.

For Google Workspace administrators

If your organisation restricts third-party apps, users see a message that Google refused the request. To allow the export, trust this OAuth client in the Admin console under Security → Access and data control → API controls → Manage third-party app access:

OAuth client ID	not yet configured
Scope requested	https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file

The export also needs Drive → Features and applications → Allow users to access Google Drive with the Drive SDK API to be on, which is Google’s default.

What this is not

There is no account connection or sync. Bizby does not sign in to Google on your behalf, read your Drive, or keep any Google credential. The only thing it writes to Google is a new spreadsheet you asked for. If you need the contents of a document on a board, paste them in, or export the file and add it as an image or PDF.