This article describes how to integrate Blameless with your Google Drive to export Blameless retrospective and incident data into Google Docs. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Overview
• Prerequisites
• Setting up Google Drive Integration
• Export Folder Configuration
• Working with Google Docs

Overview

Blameless integrates with Google Drive, enabling the export of retrospective data in Google Docs for purposes of document management and access control, leveraging Google Docs’ sharing permissions.

Google Docs are created automatically by Blameless when the incident is resolved, updated with the most recent retrospective data, linked to the retrospective, and can later on be updated on-demand with the latest data captured in your Blameless retrospective (e.g incident timeline, questionnaire in your retrospective tabs, etc).

Prerequisites

Before you start integrating Blameless with your Google Drive:

1. Ensure you have administrator access to a Blameless account.
2. Ensure you have a dedicated service (user) account with access to your Google Workspace, including the Google Drive.

Setting Up Google Drive Integration

1. Navigate to Settings → Integrations within your Blameless account.
2. Locate the Google Drive option and select either "Manage" or "Setup".
3. Input your Google service account details.
4. Specify the folder ID in Google Drive designated for storing retrospectives.

Export Folder Configuration

1. Default Folder Setup:
   • In Blameless’ Google Docs Export settings, designate a default Google Drive folder for storing all retrospectives.
2. Custom Folder Configuration:
   • For varying Incident Types, assign specific folders to organize retrospectives by category, such as Customer Incidents or Security Incidents.

Working with Google Docs

Upon resolving an incident, Blameless automatically creates a Google Doc and exports retrospective data to it in the pre-configured folder.

Documentation Access and Sharing

A link to the Google Doc is automatically added to the Blameless Retrospective page (top right) when the incident is resolved.

Blameless uses the service account used to authorize Blameless to create documents in the designated folders. Prior to the integration of Blameless, permissions for this service account must be set such that Blameless can create and edit those documents on behalf of Blameless users who have the permission to access the Retrospective page.

Blameless users with access to the retrospective in Blameless can click on the link to access the Google Doc. However, such users must still login using their Google account and be granted access to the Google Doc using the Google Doc native sharing capabilities. Owners of the Google Doc or the Google Drive folder where the Google Docs are created must go directly to the native sharing option of the Google Doc or Google Drive to update the permissions.

NOTE:

• Once you enable automatic export of your Incident Retrospectives, the Analysis section will no longer appear in the Blameless Retrospective. The template you have in place will be used as a section within the exported Retrospective itself for collaboration outside of Blameless. If you wish to still answer questions in Blameless and simply export at the end of Retrospective completion, use the Retrospective Tabs.

Google Doc Content Refresh

To ensure that the Google Doc linked to a retrospective remains up to date with the latest data captured in the Blameless, Blameless users can manually update the Google Doc at any time before the retrospective is published.

Note that the Google Doc is updated in its entirety. If you have modified content directly in the Google Doc and would like to revert back to a previous version, you can recover it using the versioning capability native to Google Docs.