How to Send Notifications from Google Sheets Canvas
Google Sheets Canvas makes it easier to turn an idea into a working spreadsheet. Once your Canvas has become part of a workflow, you may also want to know when something changes: a task becomes ready, a lead is qualified, or an approval is added.
The easiest way to add these alerts is with Check Sheet. It lets you choose the value to watch, define a condition, and send the notification to the people or tools that need to respond.
This guide walks through a practical Canvas workflow: notify a team when a task’s status changes to Ready.
Send a notification with Check Sheet
Check Sheet can watch the values in your Canvas sheet and send a notification when they match a condition.
1. Install Check Sheet
Install Check Sheet from the Google Workspace Marketplace, then open it from the spreadsheet where your Canvas content lives.
2. Choose the value to watch
Create a new check and select the Canvas sheet and the cell, row, or column that contains the value you care about. For the example above, watch the Status column and set the condition to:
Status is equal to
Ready
You can use a different condition for your workflow, such as a priority being greater than a number, a due date being today, or a required field no longer being blank. See the Check Sheet conditions documentation for the available options.
3. Add a notification target
Choose where the alert should go. Depending on your plan and configuration, Check Sheet can send notifications to email addresses and collaboration tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, or Google Chat. You can add more than one target when several people or teams need to act on the same Canvas change.
Give the notification a useful subject or message that includes the spreadsheet context. For example:
Canvas task ready: is ready for review.
If your team needs a custom message, customise the notification and include the values that help the recipient take the next step.
4. Test the check
Change a test value in Canvas so that it meets the condition. Confirm that the check runs and that the message arrives at the expected target. If you are testing a rule that should only fire once, change the value away from Ready and back again so you can verify the transition.
Check Sheet is useful when the notification rule may evolve beyond one value. You can adjust conditions, add targets, and manage the workflow from the spreadsheet as your process grows.
Troubleshooting Canvas notifications
If a notification does not arrive, check these common causes:
- The check is watching the wrong sheet or range. Confirm that the selected sheet and cell, row, or column contain the Canvas value you want to monitor.
- The value does not match the condition. Check the exact value, including spaces and capitalization. For example,
Readyandreadyare different values. - The notification target is incomplete. Verify the email address, webhook, or connected collaboration destination.
- The rule has already run. Change the test value away from
Readyand back again when testing a condition that should fire on a transition.
Once the check is working, replace the test condition and message with the values your Canvas workflow uses. You can also add multiple notification targets so the right people receive the update wherever they work.