Control Center Profile Data Not Populating

Kayla Q

Hi all,

Posting this here because I'm not getting the desired level of support from Smartsheet. Team,

 When I generate a new project, the project profile data isn't generating in the resulting project plan.

Here is my workspace:

 

 Here is the config for the new blueprint I set up:

The new blueprint relates to the folder named Amazon LPM PMO Program. These are the contents:

 My specific issue is that the data in the intake sheet is not flowing to the profile data in the project plan upon project creation. This is the template where the profile data lives:

Here is what the profile data looks like:

 

Here is the intake sheet:

Here is the project plan that generated when I created the Test 1 project. As you can see, the project profile data is not pulling in from the intake sheet.

Here is my Control Center blueprint:

Colleen Patterson

@Kayla Q

You did an excellent job in reviewing your issue.

Some items that I am seeing right away are:

1) You can't provision 2 dates. For some reason Control Center will throw an issue when trying to pull two different date columns. In my system I have start and end dates that are in the Intake sheet, but I only provision End Date for this reason.

2) Confirm that your column types in each case are exactly the same. So, if Assignee is a contact cell it should be a contact cell in the project plan.

If you want to hop into a screen share to go through this together I am happy to do that as well, to work through some of your mappings and data placeholders in your templates.

Kayla Q

Thanks, @Colleen Patterson!

1) Thanks for the tip!

2) This is confirmed

At this point, I think I give up and I'm going to just start from scratch :)

Kayla Q

@Colleen Patterson I have an update on this.

I completely restarted. I mean, I ditched my templates and my blueprint. I downloaded the PMO template from Smartsheet and made some tweaks to make it compatible with Control Center. I got one project to work, and that also broke, so I called Smartsheet, spent two hours with support, and only got a 50% fix.

20 hours of self-service later it's finally working. The only way I've been able to make it work is by provisioning zero dates - not even one. The moment I try to provision a date, the whole thing fails. I've had to write some fun functions into a separate metadata summary at the top of my projects which pulls in other applicable project data (including target start date and target end date) from the intake sheet based on the Project ID that is provisioning in the project profile data. In my Summary sheet, I have to manually link this data. This still isn't a perfect solution, but it's working.

How did you know that you can only provision one date? I've been looking at Smartsheet training resources, and I don't see that referenced.

Colleen Patterson

@Kayla Q

It definitely seems like you have been hard at work! For the one date pull: I self built our control center solution and attended the control center build instructor led course. The single date provision was something that was noted during the class.

I would still think that we should be able to get you to a better solution than this, as there is still so much self linked information. I would be happy to do a virtual call, where we can explore your sheets / solutions and see if we can't get this in better shape for you. If you want to schedule something, you can book on my calendar here: https://calendly.com/colleenpatterson/tcx-intro-call That link will schedule a 30 minute virtual session.

Kayla Q

Thanks, @Colleen Patterson!

I have a Control Center Pro Desk session on Thursday. If they can't help me finish this build out, I'll certainly reach out :)

Colleen Patterson

@Kayla Q Definitely! Hope the meeting on Thursday goes well.

Kayla Q

@Colleen Patterson I actually got this worked out with Pro Desk!

It turns out you can provision multiple dates, but you can only provision them in a single column. That is what was causing Control Center to bug out. As soon as I put the dates all in the same column, it worked like a dream :)

Colleen Patterson

@Kayla Q That is great to know, and I appreciate you follow up with me! I'll update my template and see what returns.

Kayla Q

Note to future self - This error is likely caused by 1) locked columns, 2) columns converted to function, or 3) enabled dependencies. Control Center is unhappy if any columns are locked.

Kayla Q

One more note on predecessors and dependencies: You can have them enabled, but you can't have predecessors and durations pre-populated in your template - otherwise Control Center freaks out.

Kayla Q

Also, Control Center is only unhappy if any system-generated columns are locked. You can lock columns and Control Center will still work. However, if a column has been converted to a function column, Control Center will not function.

BStump

I would have thought you would have had issues provisioning cell links because you have a Gantt Chart sheet you are trying to populate. Did either the Predecessor or Duration column cause you grief?