FAQ

Job creator questions

How does SpreadsheetWorkers work?

It is used to create jobs containing a series of small tasks that should be completed quickly, usually within excel/google sheets (or alternatively from the website directly). All these jobs relate to some form of data extraction/manipulation/research and are all performed by some human (worker). We allow these workers to use any approach they want in order to complete their tasks (this may or may not include AI). When each job is finished, you can rank each worker based on their performance. The idea is that the worker should provide answers quickly and you should see your results populating your spreadsheet every minute.

How can I create jobs?

You can create jobs using the website on your work dashboard or using Excel/Google sheets. Please see below the technical details on how to create jobs from Excel/Google sheets. The current available job types are:

Search on the web The goal is to find information about anything from the web, for example electricity consumption in KWh for different home appliances that you supply, places where people work, emails from companies, product characteristics
Classify The goal is to classify pieces of text into several categories that you specify. You can also explain to the worker how to decide between them. For example: classify customer emails as "angry + need to offer discount to them" or "resonably happy with service"
Summarise reviews for product The goal is to look at the reviews for one product on the web (typically a product on Amazon or some online retailer), and summarise the ones that refer to a specific aspect of it (for example Quality/Price/etc). For example, for "welding equipment" on amazon where we want to summarise the reviews mentioning Technical problems i.e: Costumers are mostly complaining about the low power of the welders, which yield a bad surface finish as it doesn't have enough power
Extract entities The goal is to extract entities (could be people/names/companies/products) fullfilling some criteria out of a piece of text. For example given a piece of text that compares different headphones, extract all the headphone models that are manufactured by Sony
Get product from Alibaba/Aliexpress Given a product/photo, the objective is to find the same product being sold on Alibaba or Aliexpress. This is typically the most expensive job on the platform as it requires significant time to get completed
Get info from YouTube video Given a Youtube video the goal is to extract some information from it. For example, given a video reviewing products, get the country where that video was likely recorded, or whether the products reviewed require batteries, etc. These jobs are usually more expensive than others as it usually demands more time to work

How do I deposit funds?

Click on My Profile on the left side bar, and now head to Credits/Balances on the bottom. There you can add funds using Paypal. We will be adding more payment integrations soon

How do I view the results/output of the jobs that I have created?

In your work dashboard, you can see one box per job. Each box will contain a table with the results for each task within each job. Each result row contains a "result" and an "additional info". The "additional info" is generally used to tell you where the information was obtained, how confident the worker is with each result, or any additional context. You should ask in anticipation, when creating the job what specifcally you would like to see there. The best place to indicate this to prospective workers is on the textbox "instructions" that is used to provide the instructions to the workers.

Can I invite specific workers to my jobs?

Yes. When creating a job, you need to type the username of the worker and click on the button next to it to add them. You can only invite people who have previously worked in one of your jobs. In order to get the username, you can obtain it from your work dashboard by checking previous jobs.

What's the best price to set for my jobs?

The higher the price offered per task, the more likely it is for highly ranked workers to take that job. Also, the turnaround will probably be faster as it is more likely for workers to take that job overall.

What data security concerns I need to be aware?

Do not submit jobs with confidential or sensitive information, as we can't guarantee whether workers might share any of that with external parties.

Can I cancel jobs?

You can't currently cancel jobs

Can anyone see the jobs that I created?

If you invite at least one person to your job, the job will be internally marked as private and external people won't be able to see the job

What data can workers see from me?

The worker can see your country and how much you offered per task. They can naturally see the instructions that you passed, along with the specific task to be completed

Where are the humans/workers located?

They could be located anywhere. There is currently no option to choose workers from a specific country

Worker questions

How do I get paid?

We transfer the funds to your paypal account every month as long as a minimum of 10USD are due. If not, the balance is accumulated every month until that amount is reached and hence the funds are transfered.

Why is my ranking important?

Maintaining a healthy ranking is good for ensuring you receive the best jobs. Prospective job creators usually look at the ranking to determine the best employees to engage with. Tasks are expected to be completed every minute or so, the faster the better. Consistent delays are penalized in terms of ability to engage with new jobs

How do I find jobs?

You can head to the search page and find jobs there

Why was a job cancelled?

We may decide at our sole discretion to cancel any job and in that case no payments will be due.

Creating a job using the website

In order to create a job, we need to click on "Create Job" and a pop-up will appear

On this window, you need to set up the different parameters that impact the job. On (1) we need to choose the job type, on (2) you need to choose the desired workers (this is optional - you need to put the usernames of the workers that you like), on (3) you need to fill your instructions, which should detail where to get the information, how to deal with dubious cases, and what needs to be put on the additional info field.

Using Excel

You can create, and manage jobs from the website or through Excel

This is an Excel add-in file, which contains additional functionality for Excel. Download it, go to Excel and click on File>Options>Add-Ins>Go to install on your Excel (check the video below). A new ribbon will be available

Windows

Download excel add-in (see instructions below)

This will add a new ribbon containing the following elements

Using the Spreadsheetworkers Ribbon

This is the easiest way to use the tool within Excel

Adding the Excel Add-in

1

Assuming you have downloaded and followed the instructions on the video above to install an excel add-in.

2

These are the icons that we have on our UI ribbon

3

We always need to start by calling Set code which will validate our credentials

Notice that the code here is not your password. The code needs to be obtained from the website and then heading to your profile

4

We have 6 different job types, but let's focus on a "Search on the web" job

Each one of the other job types has specific fields that differ very slightly to these ones. Regarding this specific one, the job name will be public and seen by workers. The price per task is how much you are willing to pay for each task within this job. The instructions are necessary to explain workers what needs to be done, or what kind of sources need to be used. You can also tell them what you want on the additional field: for example how confident the workers are with the results. The assign value to cell will contain the result of the job creation but in order to get the actual results generated by the workers, you will need to call a different function (Query results)

5

After the job is created we can query its status using the Check job status button

We just need to pass a job name, and a target output cell

6

In order to query the actual results from a job, click on "Query".

You need to pass the job name and the range of cells containing the tasks. You also need to input the target range for the results, and whether you want the actual result or the additional info field (which typically contains how confident the worker is, or where the data was obtained)

Using the Spreadsheetworkers macros

This is slightly more complex but gives you better flexibility to integrate into your workflows

Getting started with Excel

The examples below describe how to call the functions in Excel assuming the Add-in was installed. These functions can be called on any cell/sheet. The idea is that you need to call =spreadsheetworkers_setcode(< your email >,< your password >) with the appropiate parameters and then you can use the rest.

Setting the code

This is the starting point in Excel. It sets your code so you can then create jobs, manage them, and get the results.

=spreadsheetworkers_setcode("[email protected]","217218721mnb")
argument1: your email
argument2: your security code - it can be obtained from the website; head to your profile and it will be listed there

04/08/2023 00:11:06-> User validation correct

This result appears when the code has been validated correctly. After this happens, you can create jobs, retrieve the results, etc.

04/08/2023 00:11:06-> User validation incorrect

This result appears when either the code or the email are not correct. If this happens, you need to remediate before proceeding.

Creating jobs

There are currently 6 types of jobs that can be created, and hence one function for each job type. These are detailed below. They share pretty much the same parameters except for a few exceptions.

For all the functions below, the last argument is used to indicate if you want to send the jobs to specific people, in which case the job is deemmed private, and won't be visible to other workers

Search on the web job

=spreadsheetworkers_job_search(A19:A20,"Get the website for each one of these companies. Add the degree of certainty in the additional info column",0.54,"companies websites",A16:A17)

argument1: Range of cells containing what needs to be searched (for example these could be product names , people, etc.)
argument2: Text or cell containing instructions. These would typically detail what you need to be done, plus some detail on what you want to be returned as additional info
argument3: Price per task/cell specified in argument1
argument4: Job name (the job name is potentially visible for other workers if the job is not private)
argument5: (Optional) Range of cells containing desired workers. These would typically be workers you know/have worked with and are haappy with their work

If you wanted call this function without a list of desired workers, you can call it like this

=spreadsheetworkers_job_search(A19:A20,"Get the website for each one of these companies. Add the degree of certainty in the additional info column",0.54,"companies websites")

Classify

=spreadsheetworkers_job_classify(A1:A2,A13:A18,"There are two labels: Likely to buy again/ not likely. We want to classify each message/client according to these labels",0.54,"classify clients sentiment",A8:A9)

argument1: Range of cells specifying the claassification labels (for example: Good client/Bad client)
argument2: Range of cells containing what needs to be searched (for example these could be product names , people, etc.)
argument3: Text or cell containing instructions. These would typically detail what you need to be done, plus some detail on what you want to be returned as additional info
argument4: Price per task/cell specified in argument1
argument5: Job name (the job name is potentially visible for other workers if the job is not private)
argument6: (Optional) Range of cells containing desired workers. These would typically be workers you know/have worked with and are haappy with their work

Summarise reviews for product

=spreadsheetworkers_job_summarisereviews("Quality",A13:A18,"For each one of these bags, please highlight the main concerns raised about the quality of these products",0.54,"Quality Summary of bags - Jun 2023",A8:A9)

argument1: Topic to be summarised (possible options are: Finish, Merchant behaviour, Pricing, Quality, Technical problems)
argument2: Range of cells containing what needs to be searched (for example these could be product names , people, etc.)
argument3: Text or cell containing instructions. These would typically detail what you need to be done, plus some detail on what you want to be returned as additional info
argument4: Price per task/cell specified in argument1
argument5: Job name (the job name is potentially visible for other workers if the job is not private)
argument6: (Optional) Range of cells containing desired workers. These would typically be workers you know/have worked with and are haappy with their work

If you wanted call this function without a list of desired workers, you can call it like this

=spreadsheetworkers_job_summarisereviews("Quality",A13:A18,"For each one of these bags, please highlight the main concerns raised about the quality of these products",0.54,"Quality Summary of bags - Jun 2023")

Extract entities

=spreadsheetworkers_job_extractentities("Extract names of people only if a name and surname are provided",A13:A19,"Each one of these texts contain messages from clients",0.001,"Client name extraction",A8:A9)

argument1: Text with the entities to be extracted
argument2: Range of cells containing what needs to be searched (for example these could be product names , people, etc.)
argument3: Text or cell containing instructions. These would typically detail what you need to be done, plus some detail on what you want to be returned as additional info
argument4: Price per task/cell specified in argument1
argument5: Job name (the job name is potentially visible for other workers if the job is not private)
argument6: (Optional) Range of cells containing desired workers. These would typically be workers you know/have worked with and are haappy with their work

Get product from Alibaba/Aliexpress

=spreadsheetworkers_job_alibaba_aliexpress(TRUE,A13:A18,"For each one of the links supplied here, get the closest match in Alibaba ",0.54,"Phone chargers from Alibaba",A8:A9)

argument1: needs to be TRUE if the product needs to be searched on Alibaba. FALSE if the product needs to be searched on Aliexpress
argument2: Range of cells containing what needs to be searched (for example these could be product names , people, etc.)
argument3: Text or cell containing instructions. These would typically detail what you need to be done, plus some detail on what you want to be returned as additional info
argument4: Price per task/cell specified in argument1
argument5: Job name (the job name is potentially visible for other workers if the job is not private)
argument6: (Optional) Range of cells containing desired workers. These would typically be workers you know/have worked with and are haappy with their work

Get info from YouTube video

    =spreadsheetworkers_job_youtube(A21:A23,"For each video, list the backpacks that appear in each one of these videos and separate them with commas",0.54,"youtube job get backpacks",A8:A9)

argument1: Range of cells containing the URLs for the videos
argument2: Text or cell containing instructions. These would typically detail what you need to be done, plus some detail on what you want to be returned as additional info
argument3: Price per task/cell specified in argument1
argument4: Job name (the job name is potentially visible for other workers if the job is not private)
argument5: (Optional) Range of cells containing desired workers. These would typically be workers you know/have worked with and are haappy with their work

If you wanted call this function without a list of desired workers, you can call it like this

    =spreadsheetworkers_job_youtube(A21:A23,"For each video, list the backpacks that appear in each one of these videos and separate them with commas",0.54,"youtube job get backpacks")

Outputs

Note that these 6 functions return the same outputs.

04/08/2023 21:34:52-> Job < claasify> is loaded in the system. Please check status with=spreadsheetworkers_checkjobstatus("get startup CEO mails")

This output appears when a job is submitted correctly, or when a job is submitted with the same name as another running job (in this case the job is not created, as an existing one exists on the database - job names need to be unique).

Errors

04/08/2023 21:34:52-> Not enough funds to create job. Use the website to deposit funds
There are several outputs flagging different kind of errors, for example this appears when you don't have enough funds deposited. In that case, you need to deposit more funds using the website.

04/08/2023 21:34:52-> Job < claasify> not submitted, email+code is wrong/missing (have you called spreadsheetworkers_setcode()?)
This happens when you haven't called the spreadsheetworkers_setcode() function

04/08/2023 21:34:52-> Job <> cannot be created. Job name cannot be empty
This happens when the "job name" parameter is empty

04/08/2023 21:34:52-> Job <> cannot be created. The instructions cannot be empty
This happens when the "instructions" parameter is empty

04/08/2023 21:34:52-> Job <> cannot be created. There are empty cells passed as argument
This happens when there are cells with empty values passed

04/08/2023 21:34:52-> Job <> cannot be created. There are duplicated tasks
This happens when there are cells with duplicated values passed for the tasks argument.

04/08/2023 21:34:52-> Job <> cannot be created. There are duplicated cells passed as desired workers
This happens when there are duplicated workers. They need to be unique

Checking job status

=spreadsheetworkers_checkjobstatus("classify2")

Outputs

04/08/2023 21:34:52-> Job < claasify> was submitted at: 04/08/2023 21:52:13 / Abdul1985 completed / cost: $0.01

This appears when the job was completed. Notice that the username of the worker appears, along with the total job cost

04/08/2023 21:34:52-> Job < claasify> was submitted at: 04/08/2023 21:52:13 / awaiting for worker response / cost: $0.01

This appears when the job has been created but nobody has accepted it. It returns the date when the job was created, along with the total job cost

04/08/2023 21:34:52-> Job < claasify> was submitted at: 04/08/2023 21:42:12 / accepted, Abdu1985 working / 4 completed - 1 total tasks / cost: $0.01

This result appears when the job is open and a worker is working on it. It details the worker username, along with the total number of jobs and the total job cost

Errors

04/08/2023 21:34:52-> Job < claasify> can't retrieve status as email+code is wrong/missing (have you called spreadsheetworkers_setcode()?)

This appears when the code has not been validated (see above)

04/08/2023 21:34:52-> Job < claasify> was not found. Wrong job name?

This appears when the job does not exist

04/08/2023 21:58:47-> Job < claasify> was rejected or expired

This appears when the job was actually created, but it was then rejected or expired without any worker taking it

Pulling results

Calling the following function in Excel will bring the results. Notice that you will need to refresh it to get the latest updated results. The first parameter is the actual task/object, the second parameter is the job name, and there is a third parameter that can be: "value" or "additional info".

This brings the proper result for a job and task

=spreadsheetworkers_query(A43,"Job get cameras megapixels","value")

The output is fully dependent on the job and task specifics, but for example in this case assuming cell A43 in Excel was = "Nikon D5100 Digital SLR Camera" it could return something like this

16.2MP

Let's now bring the additional info field using the optional parameter. This is usually where the worker stores additional context and what was performed, or the degree of certainty about each result, or whatever you had asked for in the instructions while creating the job

=spreadsheetworkers_query(A43,"Job_amazon","additional info")

Again, the output is fully dependent on the job and task specifics, but for example in this case assuming cell A43 in Excel was = "Nikon D5100 Digital SLR Camera" it could return something like this. Let's also assume we had asked the worker to put here the degree of certainty about each result.

Very sure

Another option could have been to ask the worker to indicate the website used for obtaining that information, in which case the result could look like this

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Vlogging-Photography-Compact-Be...

When the worker hasn't completed the task and is working on it you will get the following

04/08/2023 21:34:52-> Waiting for worker

Errors

< No job with this argument>
This happens when the job name that we passed to the function does not match any job name that we have created

<ERROR: The job name cannot be empty >
This happens when the job name that we passed to the function is empty or null (second parameter in this function call)

<ERROR: The first parameter cannot be empty >
This happens when the task/object that we passed to the function is empty or null (first parameter in this function call)

<ERROR: The last parameter needs to be 'value' or 'additional info' >
The last parameter, which is optional needs to be either one of those two values, or it can be omitted

< No results, have you called spreadsheetsworkers_setcode() >
This occurs when you haven't validated your credentials by calling =setcode(email,code)

FAQ

Job creator questions

How does SpreadsheetWorkers work?

How can I create jobs?

How do I deposit funds?

How do I view the results/output of the jobs that I have created?

Can I invite specific workers to my jobs?

What's the best price to set for my jobs?

What data security concerns I need to be aware?

Can I cancel jobs?

Can anyone see the jobs that I created?

What data can workers see from me?

Where are the humans/workers located?

Worker questions

How do I get paid?

Why is my ranking important?

How do I find jobs?

Why was a job cancelled?

Creating a job using the website

Using Excel

Windows

MacOS

Using the Spreadsheetworkers Ribbon

Adding the Excel Add-in

1

2

3

4

5

6

Using the Spreadsheetworkers macros

Getting started with Excel

Setting the code

Creating jobs

Search on the web job

Classify

Summarise reviews for product

Extract entities

Get product from Alibaba/Aliexpress

Get info from YouTube video

Outputs

Errors

Checking job status

Outputs

Errors

Pulling results

Errors