One Sheet with Many Projects vs. Many sheets with One Project?

We're new to Smartsheet and our web and content team are going to have multiple tasks that are going to be repeated again and again. We're going to create a checklist of steps for each one, for example, steps for creating an e-book. Since we're going to be creating lots and lots of e-books, should we create a new sheet every time, or create one sheet with the checklist and just copy and paste it below the previous e-book on the same sheet that we would call "E-Book Checklist"?

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Comments

Brandy S. PVD

Hi Goldensamy,

If your checklist is rather long I would suggest creating a template for the checklist and generating a new sheet for each e-book.

If your checklist is not very long you could create hierarchies for each e-book and copy and paste the checklist as children rows to collapse and make the singular sheet more manageable.

Here is a link to creating templates and also hierarchies:

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/522123-creating-using-templates

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/504734-hierarchy-indenting-outdenting-rows

Hope this helps,

Brandy

KrisWalsh

Because you said there would be many E-Book projects, here are a few suggestions based on my experience.

One sheet for each project
Each sheet has a Status column for rows in the sheet (Not Started, On Track, Off Track, On Hold, At Risk, Complete)
In addition, each sheet as a Project Status column for the status of the entire sheet. (Active, Cancelled, Complete)
1. Only change the Project Status in the 1st row.
2. All of the children rows should have the formula
  1. =$[Project Status]$1
Use the 'Project Status' column in Reports to mine for data
1. Show me the following on all sheets where Project Status = Active
  1. All Open Tasks
  2. All Past Due Tasks
  3. Open Tasks by 'Current User'

EDIT: Thank you, Mike! He brings up a very good point below. Reasons I see for going with one big sheet.

You want summary data across projects
Very few tasks per project (less than 20)
Projects are related in some manner.
???

Mike Wilday

I would agree with what each person said here. however we have a 14 row process for course creation in our university and we created a sheet per program. A program may have 20+ courses in it. They roll-up so its easy to get to what you want. Using indents you can roll up the info as needed, plus you can create summaries from the data on the children.

Laura

Since there will be so many e-books, I would also recommend a sheet for each (that way you can export old E-book Checklists if needed), and creating a sheet to use as a template (that way if anything changes you can edit it easily). I feel like this makes it a little more user friendly, while helping to avoid project confusion if you have several at once... especially if you use Card View or Gantt Charts.

If you have different customers / categories / etc for each E-Book, then one sheet allows you to keep them individually organized. E-Book Workspace ---> specific folders.

Like Mike and Kris said, if there aren't many tasks per checklist then one sheet with hierarchies might be your best route.

Also, like both said, creating a Report including all E-Book Sheets would be VERY helpful.