Use your own spreadsheet.
AUTOMATA writes reports out of a Google Sheet. Here is how to point it at yours, and how to tell in about ten seconds whether yours will work.
Sign in with Google first
AUTOMATA reads and writes your spreadsheet as you — never through anyone else's account. Nothing below works until you're signed in.
In AUTOMATA, open the sidebar panel called Data sources & template and click Sign In. A browser window opens, you approve, it closes. That one sign-in covers your caseload sheet, your Google Drive, and your student report docs.
Point it at your spreadsheet
Same panel, scroll down to Caseload Spreadsheet. Two ways in, and they do exactly the same thing — use whichever is less annoying at the time.
Lists the spreadsheets in your Drive. Choose one, then Use This Spreadsheet. Spreadsheets only — it does not go rooting through your student files.
Or paste the link straight out of your browser's address bar.
Name the tab, if it isn't called Caseload
A spreadsheet can hold several tabs. AUTOMATA looks for one named Caseload unless you say otherwise.
If your students live on a tab called Roster, or 2026-27, or Students, type that name into the tab box before you pick. Copy it exactly as it reads at the bottom of your spreadsheet — spelling and spaces both count.
Click Check This Sheet
This is the step worth not skipping. AUTOMATA opens the top row of your tab, reads your column names, and tells you right away whether it can work with them — instead of letting you find out twenty minutes later when a report comes out empty.
It also runs on its own right after you pick a sheet, so most of the time the answer is already there. The button is for after you've edited your columns and want to re-check.
Read the answer
One line, in plain words. Three things it can tell you:
You're done. AUTOMATA can find a student in your sheet. Go pull a row.
Fix this one before anything else. Without a way to tell students apart, nothing else can happen.
Not an error. Your sheet works; those particular slots just come out empty. Add the columns whenever you get around to it, or leave them.
A way to tell one student from another.
AUTOMATA matches a student to a row. Any one of these three arrangements is enough — you do not need all of them.
FN is first name, LN is last name — and they only count as a pair. A sheet with FN and no LN gets turned down.
Everything else is optional
These are the columns the report reaches for most often. A missing one is a blank in the report, not a failure.
Starting from nothing? Create A Caseload Sheet in the same panel builds a fresh spreadsheet in your Drive with every column already named correctly.
Your column names are the fill-in slots.
Whatever you type in row 1 becomes a slot your report template can use. Name a column GRADE and the template can print that student's grade anywhere you put <<GRADE>>. Add a column, and you've added a slot. That's the whole system — there is nothing else to configure.
Four things that trip people up.
It says two of my columns have the same name
Something like BD ×2. AUTOMATA uses the first one and ignores the second — fine, right up until the first one is the empty one. It won't delete either; you decide which goes. Rename or remove the duplicate, then click Check This Sheet again.
It can't read the tab
Almost always the tab name — check it against the tab at the bottom of your spreadsheet, character for character. Second most likely: you're signed into a Google account that can't open that sheet. Check the account name shown in the panel.
It counted fewer columns than I have
Columns with an empty box in row 1 don't count and can't be filled. Give every column you care about a name.
I want my old setup back
Use KHSD Default puts everything back where it started. Nothing is lost from your spreadsheet — the button only changes which sheet AUTOMATA is looking at.
Your sheet stays yours.
Your choice is remembered on your own computer, not on ours. AUTOMATA reads and writes through your own Google sign-in, so it can only ever touch what you could already open yourself.