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Enterprises migrating to Google Workspace, often from environments like Azure or Office 365, frequently encounter challenges with legacy Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) files. While Google Workspace offers powerful collaboration and accessibility, seamlessly migrating the existing Excel files (or transforming the incoming Excel files) to Google Sheets is crucial for a smooth transition.
This article explores how enterprises can leverage the Google Drive API to build efficient migration pipelines, specifically using the files.copy method to convert .xlsx files to Google Sheets format. We'll also demonstrate how this pipeline can be orchestrated efficiently from an SAP ABAP environment using the ABAP SDK for Google Cloud, highlighting a practical migration solution for businesses with SAP based business processes.
The Enterprise Migration Challenge - Excel in a Google Workspace World
- Cloud Collaboration is Key: Modern enterprises rely on cloud-based solutions like Google Workspace for enhanced collaboration and accessibility.
- Migration Challenges: Migrating to Google Workspace from platforms like Azure/Office 365 often reveals a challenge with legacy Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) files.
- Excel's Limitations in Google Drive: Uploading .xlsx files to Google Drive provides basic access but doesn't fully leverage Google Sheets' collaborative features.
- Impact on Collaboration and newer applications: This limitation can hinder the benefits of migrating to Google Workspace, leading to old habits and data silos.
- Going Beyond Simple Transfer: Enterprises need a strategic approach that goes beyond simple file transfer, ensuring data integrity and access to Google Sheets' full functionality.
"A robust and automated process for converting .xlsx files to Google Sheets format is crucial for a successful transition."
Unlocking the Power of the Google Drive API
The Google Drive API provides programmatic access to manage files and folders within Google Drive. It's a powerful tool for automating file operations, including migration.
Files.copy is the specific method within the Drive API that is the key for our migration process. It allows us to create a copy of a file, and crucially, change its MIME type during the copy process. The MIME type identifies the file's format. By changing the MIME type from application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet (for .xlsx) to application/vnd.google-apps.spreadsheet (for Google Sheets), we effectively convert the file.
This presents enterprises with unique opportunities like,
- Direct conversion of files without the need for an intermediate format.
- Preserve the original data (most of the time - some complex formatting might require adjustments).
- Build automation pipelines, either through application logic or scripts and workflows.
Few things to consider before designing your pipelines,
- Authentication: Requires proper authentication to access the Google Drive API (OAuth 2.0).
- Error Handling: Implement robust error handling to manage potential issues (e.g., file not found, API quota limits).
Below are the parameters that you should pass to the files.copy method of the Google Drive API from you application logic.
- fileId: ID of the XLSX file on your Google Drive (Path Parameter)
- supportsAllDrives: “true” to include “My Drive” and “Shared Drives” (Query Parameter)
- Below fields in the request body,
- mimeType: 'application/vnd.google-apps.spreadsheet' which is Mime Type of Google Sheets
- name: user specified File Name of the Google Sheet to which XLSX content would be copied to
- parents[]: Append Folder ID of the Google Drive folder where the Google Sheet is to be placed
You can skip passing the name in the request body if you want to create the Google Sheet with the same name as the XLSX file.
You can skip passing parents in the request body if you would like to create the Google Sheet in the same folder as your XLSX file is in (a prefix Copy of would be added to the new file).
Building the Migration Pipeline
To efficiently build your migration pipelines, you can task an “Agent” to perform or orchestrate the file conversion.
"An agent is an application that attempts to achieve a goal as described through application logic, using the tools that it has at it’s disposal."
Here the task or the goal of the Agent is to efficiently copy the xlsx files as Google Sheets and the tool that it has is the Google Drive API’s copy files method.
For an enterprise, the Agent to realise this use case can be,
- Either an automation application scheduled to run at a frequency or an event, or
- A script scheduled to run at frequency or an event.
Application logic for the Agent can be,
- Take a source Google Drive ID which has the Microsoft Excel files,
- Take a target Google Drive ID to place the copy Google Sheet files,
- List the File IDs of the excel files at the source Google Drive using files.list method of the Google Drive API,
- Iterate the list of IDs for excel files to invoke files.copy method of the Google Drive API by passing the parameters as described in the article before,
- Handle any errors from the API (authentication issues, quota limits, etc.) and log them either in Google Cloud Logging or at your enterprise logging platform.
Choose to run the Agent in batches (background jobs) to improve performance and reduce API call overhead.
SAP ABAP Integration: Orchestrating the Migration from Your ERP
Many enterprises rely heavily on SAP for managing core business processes. Integrating the Excel to Google Sheets migration pipeline with SAP offers significant advantages:
- Centralized Control: Manage the migration directly from within the SAP environment.
- Automation: Trigger the migration based on SAP events (e.g., file uploads, scheduled jobs).
- Simplified Workflow: Streamline the migration process and integrate it seamlessly into existing business workflows.
- Improved Data Governance: Ensures that Excel files are migrated and integrated into Google Sheets according to established SAP specific business rules.
The ABAP SDK for Google Cloud provides a set of tools and libraries for ABAP developers to interact with Google Cloud services, including the Google Drive API which can be used as a tool to build a SAP ABAP based Agent to realise efficient conversion of your existing and incoming excel files to Google Sheets.
Below is an architecture to show ABAP based Agent performing your migration.
To build the Agent in SAP, you would have to,
- Install and configure security settings of the ABAP SDK for Google Cloud,
- Configure OAuth 2.0 based authentication to invoke Google Drive API,
- Pick authorization scopes for your enterprise from the list here to maintain in OAuth profile in SAP,
- Validate authentication configuration by running the authentication validator tool shipped with the SDK.
Once you have setup the SDK to invoke Google Drive, you can build the application logic for the Agent using the method COPY_FILES of SDK shipped class /GOOG/CL_DRIVE_V3. Below is the code snippet to show you the API invocation through the SDK class natively from the ABAP application layer.
DATA:
lv_q_supportsalldrives TYPE string,
lv_p_file_id TYPE string,
ls_input TYPE /goog/cl_drive_v3=>ty_010.
TRY.
* Open HTTP Connection
DATA(lo_client) = NEW /goog/cl_drive_v3( iv_key_name = '<Client Key>' ).
* Populate relevant parameters
lv_q_supportsalldrives = 'true'.
lv_p_file_id = '<File ID of the XLSX file on Google Drive>'.
ls_input-mime_type = 'application/vnd.google-apps.spreadsheet'. "Mime Type of Google Sheets
ls_input-name = '<File Name of the Google Sheet to which XLSX content would be copied to>'.
APPEND '<Folder ID of the Google Drive folder where the Google Sheet is to be placed>' TO ls_input-parents.
* Call API method: drive.files.copy
CALL METHOD lo_client->copy_files
EXPORTING
iv_q_supportsalldrives = lv_q_supportsalldrives
iv_p_file_id = lv_p_file_id
is_input = ls_input
IMPORTING
es_output = DATA(ls_output)
ev_ret_code = DATA(lv_ret_code)
ev_err_text = DATA(lv_err_text)
es_err_resp = DATA(ls_err_resp).
IF lo_client->is_success( lv_ret_code ).
MESSAGE 'Success' TYPE 'S'.
ELSE.
MESSAGE lv_err_text TYPE 'E'.
ENDIF.
* Close HTTP Connection
lo_client->close( ).
CATCH /goog/cx_sdk INTO DATA(lo_exception).
MESSAGE lo_exception->get_text( ) TYPE 'E'.
ENDTRY.
ABAP based Agent can use the same to build it’s copy files functionality based on application logic as described earlier in the article.
The ABAP Agent to migrate excel files can be orchestrated through,
- Background Jobs: Schedule ABAP background jobs to run the Agent at specific intervals or during off-peak hours.
- User Events: Trigger the Agent based on user actions within SAP (e.g., uploading an Excel file to a specific transaction).
- Workflow Integration: Integrate the Agent into SAP workflows to automate it as part of broader business processes.
Benefits and Conclusion
Migrating legacy Excel files to Google Sheets is a critical step in a successful transition to Google Workspace. By leveraging this approach, organizations can unlock the full potential of Google Workspace, improve collaboration, and streamline their business processes. With this migration, they can use Google Sheets API to read the excel data from the converted Sheet from their transformed applications, which was not possible with the excel files.
The seamless invocation of Google APIs through ABAP SDK for Google Cloud presents significant opportunities for SAP enterprises to build Agents to manage their excel migration pipelines. They can also think about building similar Agents to realise their other business processes, unlocking the full potential of Google Cloud and leveraging Google Cloud as their side by side extension to fuel business outcomes.
"These Agents can be GenAI Agents as well and can use Vertex AI SDK as a tool to realise GenAI based use cases."
We encourage you to try and explore the migration Agent described in this article. Also, let us know if you have similar Agentic opportunities in your business processes.
Share your experiences and feedback with us on our Google Cloud Channel.
