Reference
Workflows & the field that will not write
Six automations keep the register current without letting the Google Places bill run away. Below them is a ranked diagnosis of the specific fault described in your brief — a field the API returns successfully that never lands in the database.
01 — The critical path
Import & deduplicate
The only workflow allowed to create a business record. Every branch either updates in place, stops for a human, or inserts — and every outcome is logged against the run that produced it.
02 — The expensive one
Tiered refresh
Where the API budget is won or lost. Each field group has its own staleness rule and its own minimal field mask, and owner-edited fields are skipped before a call is even made.
03 — Catalogue
All six workflows
04 — Diagnosis
“One Google Places field that is returned successfully by the API but is not currently being written correctly”
Ranked by how often each turns out to be the actual cause. The first two account for the overwhelming majority, and the first one takes about thirty seconds to rule out — which is why it is worth checking before anything else.
05 — Principles
How the API bill is kept down
06 — Before launch
Testing & debugging checklist
The things that actually break a directory built on an external API, in the order they tend to break.