Dynamic Reporting for Newly added projects

Dawn McCallister

Hello

I am looking for functionality / configuration that will reduce the administrative effort to our portfolio reporting when a new project is added. Today I have to go into every report and manually add the sheets from the project folder to the report in order to keep the portfolio data accurate.

My current structure: Workspace that contains all project detail> folder titled "Active Projects> Folder that contains our standardized sheets and reports at the project level. & a folder that use used as the standard template. Also within that same workspace is a folder titled "Daily Management Reporting> Manager's dashboard and reports that should pull data from all project plan sheets.

Process: A project is approved to move forward, I copy the template folder in the file "Active Projects" and rename it, along with renaming the sheets. Add a little detail from the approval meeting like Lead, Start and End and approved budget. The project dashboard automatically starts pulling the new data. YAY

The daily management (portfolio) level updates. When I created the report, selected the "Active Project" file, thinking (hoping) that now when project were added these reports would automatically pull in the detail needed. It does not - I have to manually go back into each report and select the "Active Project" file again. I have to do the same thing when a project is removed from active status. There are 27 reports that feed the user dashboard, manager dashboard and vp dashboard. Time consuming to say the least and leaves my reporting wide open for inaccuracy. Certainly there is a better way to configure my project workspace ... right ???

Also note, we do not have Control Center.

I am sure there are questions, start sending them and I do hope for a better solution.

Thank you

Dawn

Matt Johnson

Hi @Dawn McCallister

Bottom line, you need Control Center. And you already know the most important thing, its not about the time saving (although thats nice), its about the "leaves my reporting wide open for inaccuracy".

However, as for your reports not updating, you could aim the report at the entire Workspace that contains all the projects. Any newly added projects would be added to your report. The drawback is, depending on how many sheets are in your template, the sheet could could get very large very quickly. Reports pulling from over 1000 sheets start to bog down the system and you could experience instability issues.

Control Center has a fix for that which is called Dynamic Report Scope which does exactly what you had hoped for in your description above. You set which of the sheet(s) within the Template you want in the report and it automatically adds only those to all newly created Projects in Control Center. You can read more about that in the link below. If you do decide to get Control Center, it's highly recommended to seek help from either Smartsheet direct or a Smartsheet Partner.

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2482112-dynamic-report-scope

I hope that helps.

Matt

Matt Johnson

Hi @Dawn McCallister

Bottom line, you need Control Center. And you already know the most important thing, its not about the time saving (although thats nice), its about the "leaves my reporting wide open for inaccuracy".

However, as for your reports not updating, you could aim the report at the entire Workspace that contains all the projects. Any newly added projects would be added to your report. The drawback is, depending on how many sheets are in your template, the sheet could could get very large very quickly. Reports pulling from over 1000 sheets start to bog down the system and you could experience instability issues.

Control Center has a fix for that which is called Dynamic Report Scope which does exactly what you had hoped for in your description above. You set which of the sheet(s) within the Template you want in the report and it automatically adds only those to all newly created Projects in Control Center. You can read more about that in the link below. If you do decide to get Control Center, it's highly recommended to seek help from either Smartsheet direct or a Smartsheet Partner.

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2482112-dynamic-report-scope

I hope that helps.

Matt

Dawn McCallister

Matt

thank you Matt - I thought that might be the answer, which is why I called out that we did not current have that as part of our contract. Might be time to look at it again.

thank you

Dawn