Make a Better Template - Ambassador Nomination Template

About this Tutorial

Create a nomination or voting template. Looking to build better Google Sheets? Andrew from Better Sheets is here to help! Join his membership to access exclusive videos and email support. In this video, Andrew takes a closer look at a Google Sheet template by Tableau ambassador Adam Miko, offering tips and tricks for a better user experience. Save time and effort with Andrew's easy copy-and-paste method. Want more? Join his membership today and start building better Sheets!

Video Transcript

<div> Welcome. Hello I'm Andrew. I run Better Sheets. And this video is going to be interesting because you're, most people are probably gonna watch this on YouTube. If you are watching this on YouTube, then understand that Better Sheets is actually a group of videos that go way deeper than any of the videos on. Hope to and it's a membership to get not just access to videos, but you actually get access to me. You can email me and ask me any questions. We are building better Google sheets.

We are doing a lot of really cool stuff, and this video is one of One of the type of videos that I've started to make recently where I find a Google sheet, a template , or some kind of Google sheet online and try to make it better. All the videos, or most of the videos that I have in the members area are very specific how to create headers , different ways to think about headers , how to design a better sheet, but like very specific things.

But I'd like to from time to time, Come into a sheet and try to bring all of the knowledge I have with me into it and make it a better user experience, but also a better experience for the person making it. Maybe they have some group that they're assigned to and a lot of Google sheets will look similar cause we'll use the default font, we'll use default sizing of rows and headers . We will think one. But really a user will use it in a different way.

And so I spend a lot of time thinking about the user. I spend a lot of time thinking about how are they actually going to access this, and what is the information they need at the exact time they need it. All right, so the very first thing I see when I open this, so actually let me explain what this is. So I literally just looked on Twitter, found the very first Google template , Google sheet template I could find, and this is by Adam Miko. He is working with Tableau and he is getting, trying to help people with this Tableau ambassador nomination.

And it's a sheet that, not a sheet, it's a form that has many different categories, but you might not know which ones are like, you might not know what information you need when you're filling it out and you have to go back and it takes a long time to fill this out if you don't know, if you don't have everything you need and you don't know what you need. So what he did is he took each of the elements that you need to fill out and put it all in one sheet, and he ma, makes it available. So you can see, okay, here's a form introduction, here's a page one, and this is, what is your name?

What is your email? And right there, what is your name? What is your email address? So he is taking the telo nomination form, recreating a Google sheet so that you can save the time and save that information somewhere else and just copy and paste it in later. Okay. So that's what it's used for. What Adam has done is he's introduced. The template , the intention here, he has three lines here talking about how to download it and actually has a link to how to make a copy of this doc. But I will show you a very much better, very better, a much better way of doing this. Very better.

A very much easier way. Oh my God. So I will show you that first. And then he does this interesting thing with the form pages. They can be collapsed when you have edit access . He does one thing that is actually really nice, but I'm not necessarily like a huge fan of it. He says he has this key and he says this gray area equals entry cell below. So this is a lot of words and a lot of energy. When, if he had designed it as forms , look you don't need to put this in.

So you can actually make it a lot easier on the user if you don't put in a key and you don't give them lots of instructions if you create the sheet so that it looks and feels like a form and they enter it in, or it has some interactivity right away. Then it would be a lot easier for the user. Okay scrolling down, he goes he goes through every single one of the pages. I'm not gonna do that. I'm just gonna start at the top and go maybe one or two pages and give some tips.

Not too deep, but if you have any questions, also, if you are Adam and you're watching this and you have any more questions please feel free to reach out. You can find me at where can you find me? Oh my God, Twitter is my, here, I'll put my Twitter here, twitter.com/camie. But actually also twitter.com/better sheets or my YouTube channel. Better sheets. Yeah, if you're a member already, you're probably watching this not on YouTube. Hi, welcome, and let's just get started. So right away here is the much easier way to make copies. And this is really user-centric.

Okay, go up to the URL and over on the right it has this edit, right edit. And you're going to replace that all with copy. So now let's go to that. So we have the spreadsheet slash d, and then we have the U id, and then we do slash copy and watch what happens immediately. The very first thing you get is make a copy. So what you can do is, You can give someone a link in here and say, to download or just make a copy. You can give a button that says Make a copy. So I'll do that first. So let's do this. We'll make a copy. I'll be right back. Okay, so we've created our copy.

It just took a little, a bit of time cuz of how I'm recording this video. But I have done nothing yet to it. But here's what we can do. If we are going to make a button that says, make a copy of this. Look at how much stuff we can delete. We can say editing, downloading document. We can delete that. All of this here, we can delete half of this here. There you go. Now we have this template is intended to assist. So we have that and then ping me on Twitter. So we're gonna fix this up. One second. So the first two things we're gonna do is we've deleted all that.

We need to add a button. All right, so let's do this. I'm gonna insert one above. I'm gonna put it right here across these two. You know what, and I'm going to insert one more above and one more below. Why that is, is I want a little, I want more white space around this button. I'm gonna make the rose tiny around it. I'm gonna make this the button. Let's see. I'm gonna make a let's go. Blue, let's go with that thick blue around it. Okay, so we have that. Now let's make it like this, right?

We're gonna do that in reverse. We're gonna make it a little darker in the center and the outside. The opposite. Okay, so that sort of looks like a button. Oh, actually, what's even better, let's try this. I'm gonna. Put this w let's see what are the colors we're working with? Let's figure out our colors. This is Tableau. Let's try to match it with the colors a little bit. I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a screenshot and I'm gonna go to this I just Googled how to get a image color from images. Let's upload that file. It was this one. Nope. Tableau.

It was this. All right, nice. Let's use that. Okay. Where 's our better sheet? So we're going to go to custom. We're gonna put that in and already. Nice. Much better. Now we're gonna write, make a copy. Let's do this all in upper case, make a copy. We gonna do, how should we do this? I don't like aerial as Let's do Oswald. That's nice color there. We're gonna put this vertically a align in this horizontally and a line there. Make a copy. Let's make this a little, and now we just do command K put in our link. So we just have to go up here.

Actually, we can do it off of mine so you can make a copy of. If you get access and all we're gonna do is at the end, copy. It's not. There you go. So now you can make a copy. Oh, let's fix that. Text. And I don't like the, there you go. So make a copy. Click here to make a copy. Maybe that's click here, click to make a copy. Maybe that's, Click to make a copy right there. Boom. We took all of that text, we took all of that stuff, all of that instructions and made it one button for our user. Cool. So now this is a header . Let's fix this up a little bit.

We're gonna get, the next thing we're gonna do after that is we're gonna go to add the Twitter. I'm gonna show you a little, some fun stuff we can do here for Adam. Make put his picture there. But for now, let's work on this header . So this template is intended to assist in helping you make nominations a little more. It will provide a big picture item to copy paste into the nomination forms . Before you complete the template below, please read the introduction link, use the plus minus. So the introduction link, I think, is this here.

So that seems like a really important thing and in, in his other version. All three of these links are treated the same. They have the same sides, the same text, and it's actually pretty hard to see that. This is the form introduction and this is your Tableau introduction. So let's make that a little more apparent cause that seems really important. We're gonna double it. Size there. We want form introduction. We can double that size form link. What did this say? Tableau nomination Intro. Let's say, so introduction. Let's see here.

Introduction, rinse, and repeat for many nos. Let's give this a little bit more room. I like putting stuff on. I use command enter to give it some more space to do that. Cool. So that gives it a little more space. Let's get that background different. Let's do something from the colors as well. Let's say there's a yellow there, there's a red, what is this other? This lighter blue. Ooh, that looks nice. Let's do that. 77 90 A. So let's give it some trust. Custom color here. Ooh, that's sweet. Wait, that's pretty hard to read. I don't like aerial. Let's do consols.

Let's make that a bit bigger. Okay. Wait. While we're doing this, I just realized one of my pet peeves is having all of these columns that we're not using and all of these rows. So here's how I, quick, quickly, I just realized we're, we have such a small view port. And we're gonna do, I'm gonna do shift command to the right arrow. I'm gonna delete all of that, and I'm gonna go all the way to the bottom and scroll down to the bottom. And this is really simple and easy and makes it really easy for your readers or anyone who's trying to use a form.

Basically this prevents them from going anywhere else. It prevents them from having to scroll around and figure out where they. Okay, so this template is intended to, let's add, you know what? We don't have a nice header , so let's just, I know we have the title up there, but let's create a nice little header there. Let's, he got rid of the grid lines so nicely, but he added these lines around. I'm gonna get rid of them for now. Let me get rid of those cuz it's nice and clean. Actually, I'm gonna get rid of all of these. That's gonna get rid of.

That makes it nice and much cleaner. Nice. Let's do that through the entire thing. Cause we might, we don't need that key. And I realize one of the problems, ah, not so bad. So we still know our pages are here. Page one, page two. I think we forgot page three or page two. Is that here? Nope, there's no page form. Page three. There is no page two. Okay, good. I didn't mess that. Cool. So let's add a header ambassador notion template . I don't want to use consols for this. I don't want to use owa. Montserrat looks pretty darn good. Really big. I'm gonna, I'm gonna merge those.

Okay, let's give it a little more room cuz you know what's gonna happen. Is the moment we scroll down, we don't care about that header . It's not fixed, so we can make that pretty darn big, really nice. Give it some nice white space. We can put all of these on different rows if we want, but I'm gonna leave 'em there because we can do the command, enter sign, and give it a little more white space. Assist in helping this. This is a little bit easier to read than squishing it all the way up into this one big block. We've given it a little more room to breathe.

We can give it even more room like this. But the next thing we wanna do, so we have a nice thing. This is upsetting me a little. It's a little too dark. Let's go back to this custom color. I'm just gonna lighten it up a little bit. There we go. And what we're gonna have to do is we're gonna change that text to black that looks better. I, others might disagree. I think that looks better. And I want to, I wanna center this a little bit more. Just click here to make a copy. So we're gonna have to do a little extension here. Yeah, that's nice. Nice. The error in the center.

Click to make a copy. Boom. Next thing. We wanna get Adam's face in here. He is the one who made this give him some credit and also make it a lot nicer to it creates getting a picture in here. Breaks up the text a little bit. So let's do this. Ping me on Twitter for help. Let's keep that. Let's go grab his photo. We have it here. I'm gonna save his image , Adam. Oh, wrong one. So let's put it right here. I'm gonna do it in these four. Let's merge those off. Let's insert an image in cell here. It is. A simple thing you could do here is also create a circle.

And that might cut it up a little. That's what I will do. I'm actually gonna run into Photoshop, make this a circle. There's other ways you can do it, but I don't, I just, I wanna break up the the squares here, and I'll show you what that looks like. All right. So we, I went over in Photoshop, made a circle with a little clipping mask. Let me show you how it, what it looks like and. Comparison to this. Let's go file. Nope. Insert image into cell. I have it right here. And see right there. You can see it really cuts away that like square images. Let's move that over there.

I'm gonna make it in the center. There's Adam and all his glory. And you can also have that under, oh, actually, that's what I'll do. I'm gonna do one below. Get a little more white space here, put it right there. Merge these two. And now when? When we see, as we say, ambassador nomination. It shows his picture right here. Click to make a copy. Oh, that's it. Just click that to make a copy. Oh, that's awesome. Can use it right away. No need to get instructions form introduction here. Here's an introduction. Now the key. So now we need to make this look and feel like a.

Two ways to do this, right? One is with this gray kind of thing, but a form. Let's look at, let's look at what this form looks like here. This form only has a thin gray line around the area you're supposed to type in and what is your name? Okay, let's try to recreate that. So what is your name? And let's do, I'm gonna do this first. I'm gonna get that. I'm gonna put it right here BC and D. I'm gonna merge those. I'm gonna use the thinnest line and a gray. Let's look. Let's see what that looks like. Nice. Now that looks very similar to this, right? What is your name?

There's the finger line. Adam would be. Hopefully, maybe he'll watch this video. We can make it a little darker if we want, if it is a little faint we can just increase that color there. Okay. That's maybe even a little bit more nice thin line around there. What is your name? We can actually, lemme do this, make consoles might look funny here. That looks cool. And so now we can take. What is your name? What is your email address? And now our, this actually is looking like a form, right? This looks like this. Actually, I even noticed this.

The text is a little blue, so we can do that as well. Cuz what happens in a Google sheet many times is we think just black and white. The, we want high contrast, but in actuality to make this a little bit easier to read and see and like experience. If we're spending a lot of time in Google Sheets, let's do this. Not dictionary, let's not do that. Let's use this now. Now we're cooking, right? We're gonna copy and paste format only. Now that looks cool, right? We can do the same here. Page format only . Nice.

So now we're pu pulling that theme in. It's not just a black and white form. We can do the same here. We'll center that up. Let's make that double form introduction. And now, right when we look at this, when we're going down here, we're saying ambassador nomination template . Fill it out. It's a form. Click here, make a copy. It's a form introduction. What am I gonna do with. This thing that looks like a form, I'm gonna fill it out. So I don't need this key whatsoever. I don't need to use that. And now our introduction is way more prominent, right?

If we want to make this, we recap, introduction, read the introduction, read, we can add a read. The introduction can put that across the entire. Read the introduction and then form one, let's move that to consoles so we can also give this a little more. I'm gonna give this a little, this form page, just a little more space and a little more size. And so now this is reading pretty darn good. This is really simple to read, right? We have a nice templatized, not templatized color. Header up here that fits the say the version of this. We have an image of Adam here. Hello Adam.

You can still ping him on Twitter. Oh, the Twitter. One more thing I will do is add to this image command. Oh, we can't add. So you, what you can do here is, this is a really interesting pitfall or challenge. You can insert image over cells . We're going to do that. And with this you can add a link. If you do image in cells , you can't add a link. Sounds silly to me. So here we have Adam. Let's, ah. This is, it's arriving me crazy. We can move it around. Let's delete that one. Move that right there.

We'll do command k whoop. Okay, so what's interesting about images is that you can't add a link to the image . You have to add an image to the link. So instead of hosting the image on my own with the round one, what I did is I used equals hyperlink . I put the link to his Twitter and then image , and I use the URL of his Twitter image . And this still gets you that square image , which is okay if you don't wanna use that if you don't wanna host your own images. But but this gives you a few different options. So one is you can insert an image into the cell.

You can insert an image onto the page as a second option, or third, you can link to the anything you want with an image if you use equals hyperlink , and then com. Image and then have the u URL of the image there. Okay. Or what you can do also is just have this text here, ping them on Twitter.

So abs absolutely, because I haven't talked to Adam, I don't know if this introduction is super, super important, but probably is, it's probably something that if he mentions it up here in, in the discussion and also has a link to it here, it's probably very, But in his original one, these three links all have the same size, the same colors the same hierarchy. And so in our new version, what we did is we just made it really big. This is the most important thing. Then that should be the most prominent thing once you start reading this then immediately you just, you see a form.

This looks and feels like a form. Doesn't take very much time to put together, just make, you just need to merge themselves. Put a little label up here and then you have your form. The other way he had it was with these gray key and he had to explain, right? You spend a lot of time of your sheet explaining what this is. Oh, this is a form. Fill out the gray areas. And I've been there. I've done that. What I typically do, if you do want some visual representation, color, here's what I do. I use a garish blue This. No one's going to use this color for anything.

And so what I use it for is just to show, fill this out. And if I'm working in a small team or a company and I'm creating Google Docs for them and they have to input a lot of data in places, this really saves a ton of time. I educate them once. No one's gonna forget, fill in, where is blue? That's it. You can absolutely do that. I don't recommend it if it's a public document because not very many people will know. As you saw in his previous doc, in the pre in document, we had to create a key, right?

Enter your information here in this gray area. And it's the same, even though it's a garage blue. It's the same idea. You have to tell people, oh, you have to fill this out. Make it a little gray here with this with this border, this looks more like a form than just doing. Key. See, like he made it a darker black. I can go either way. This looks like a form, but also it looks a lot cleaner if you just keep it the same the same color as the background. So now we have we've tempo not templatize this, we've made it more thematic with the colors.

We've brought in this click to make a copy, which got rid of three paragraphs and a couple links. We made a nice image here for 'em. We've made a pretty darn much better version of this document already. I'm not gonna go through this entire thing. If you are interested in how I would do the entire. Please leave a comment or just ask a very specific question. I can make more videos about this and hopefully you learned something really interesting with some images.

We've learned something interesting with how to make a copy. And also just give your sheets a lot of white space if you haven't done it yet. If you haven't, just thought of that before. Push your text around get people some more space. Give your text space to breathe. Thanks so much for watching. If you're not a member yet and you're watching this on YouTube, go check out better sheets.co co that's co better sheets.co. Become a member, get access to this sheet, so I won't be giving YouTube me YouTube viewers a link to this sheet.

But all members when I produced the video for them, they get a link to the sheet to see what I did and if I made any formulas. They have access to all of. Thanks so much for watching. Bye.</div>