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PLEASE HELP! 

 

I’m working on a Google Sheet integration with ManyChat where I want to collect a user input in ManyChat, compare it with a particular lookup column in the sheet, and return a value from another column in the sheet if the input IS EXACTLY SAME, OR ALMOST CLOSE to any value in the lookup column. 

The ‘exactly same’ part works smoothly but I also want it to check for the closest results (to cater to typing errors or incomplete inputs) as the input and lookup data is supposed to be a multiple words input. Now for the sake of my life, I can’t figure out a way to check for similar values and return the closest one - I’ve tried the integration via zapier with its filters and formatter, but even though the logic looks correct, it still only works for the ‘exactly same’ input. I even tried it within Google sheets by using accurate formulas to insert the input in a cell and then compare it with the lookup column (all within the sheet) but that still doesn’t work. I’m now thinking that it’s a Google Sheet limitation itself that it only returns TRUE for the very exact entries, but still believe there’s a way around this.

 

Does any of the fellow experts have any idea of how to achieve this or have worked around a similar setup in the past? I’d appreciate a simple, no-code workaround if there’s any. Or if there are suggestions to use something else for this usecase instead of Google Sheets (we’re talking about 400+ rows and counting), please suggest that as well. I’m open to using any other platform or a third party app if needed, even MC AI Step if there’s a way out there (already tried though). 

 

Please help from experience and expertise. TIA!

​@has96 I don’t think you’ll find any pre-built solution to do the best match you’re looking for. All automation tools I know are deterministic, and it’s either an exact match or no match. Best case scenario you can consider case-insensitive searches, but that’s about it...

If I had to do this, I’d go with creating my own script, probably using AI to help me find the best match option from the list. You can use App Scripts to do this and have it run in Google Sheets, and integrate to Manychat with External Requests.

 

Hope this helps!

Hey, ​@has96!

 

As Gustavo already said, there's no easy neither 100% accurate way to do what you are looking for.

 

But another option could be a validation checking if what the user send exists in your spreadsheet and asking again if it doesn't exist… It would look something like this:

  1. Use Data Collection to get you “code” (or anything you want to lookup)
    • Store it into a Custom User Field (In the example = CODE_FIELD)
  2. Add an Action step:
    • Create a second field to store data from your database and set it up to be cleared (in the example = TEXT_FIELD)
    • Search if the "code/ text” the user send exist in your database and get some value back to the TEXT_FIELD
  3. As Next Step, check if the TEXT_FIELD has any value
    • If the Code don't exist in your database, the field will be empty
  4. If it has any value, continue your flow, because it exists in your database
  5. If the value is empty, ou can inform the user that it's incorrect and ask again to send a valid code/text.

 

 

EXTRA: Other thing that could also work is using some external tool to train an AI with all your valid entries, and it will classify what the user sends to one of them.

But that needs an additional tool, integrations and many tests…

 

 

Hope this helps!

🙌

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