Rules for Google Sheets

There are several attributes you'll need to have in your google sheet to ensure it function properly with Trial Trace.

• Orientation
  • Your sheet should be oriented vertically, so each column represents an attribute, and each row represents a data point.
• Headers
  • The first row of your google sheet must be the labels for the columns underneath, such as Name or Type or Date. Each column must have a label and each label must be unique
• Footers
  • There is no support for table footers, which means that any rows with data or notes that appear below the main body of data will be interpreted as valid rows and will likely cause unexpected behavior or unexpected values to appear in your TrialTrace charts
• Dates
  • Dates must be formatted as either YYYY-MM-DD or MM-DD-YY formatting. Support for other standard formats is not available at this time
• Empty Cells
  • to ensure data integrity, any blank cell in the sheet will come in as "missing value" in TrialTrace. If you intend for these cells to indeed be blank. you must add whitespace characters to those cells before importing the sheet as a data resource. 

Other than these requirements, there are some general best practices when working with Google Sheets and TrialTrace

• Keep the sheet clean and consistent
  • TrialTrace expects the data to be a simple table with a single header and fully contiguous rows and columns with no breaks between those rows and columns. As a rule of thumb, use Google Sheets more like a database and less like a reporting tool, where you may have multiple tables or pivot tables with spacer columns or rows in between them, or a row of notes above the headers
• Store information in cells, not in formatting
  • TrialTrace can only read data that is explicitly written into cells. This means any formatting applied that is intended to store special information will be ignored. In this case, it is best to make a new column with that information written into its cells. 
  • For example, say a table of trials has a list of mechanisms of action for the primary drug in each trial. It is a common practice to tie similar mechanisms of action together into larger classes using color formatting. Say, PD-1, PD-L1 and CTLA4 are all blue and blue stands for checkpoint inhibitor. This practice is convenient in a sheet as it gives a quick visual cue as to which classes exist and where similarities may lie. However, this data on MoA classes is now impossible to visualize; you would have been better off creating a new column to the side of the MoA column, with each class coded into each cell. 
  • Note: This practice is also a better way to store information over the long run, as formatting is easily lost