Is there a way to Auto ADD rows after a form has been submitted?

KimAffolder

I've been trolling training and searching for a way to have extra Children rows automatically added after a form has been submitted, to no avail. Is this possible?

The Move and Copy rows options don't seem to get the job done.

For example: I have a form (for data intake), when a User submits the form, I would then like the system to add several Child rows (roughly 21) below the original intake information so I can use those and generate Workflow.

Is this possible?

TIA

Cory Page

I think this is possible but it might be a tad tricky to explain over a chat box but I will try.

Right off I would create a template sheet that has your "Roughly 21 Child rows" and I would use this sheet for my form submissions. I would change the form settings to make sure that any new rows come in at the top rather than bottom.

When a form is submitted I would trigger the automation to "Copy" the 21 child rows and the submitted form row over to a separate Raw data sheet. This will meet your main requirement of triggering the child rows and keeping your form data on top. In this same automation when it runs make sure to "Record a date" on at least the form Row, this way when a new form comes in you can say only copy if the form row doesn't have a date but always copy the "Child Rows". A filter of some kind will be needed what will depend on what data is in your forms.

Now you need to reset the Template sheet, for this you will need some kind of flag in the form data so that we can clearly mark that row in our automation. The second automation can run daily or as frequently as you would like basically we will say "Move" Rows that are our form submissions only (Again filter of some kind) and that have our "Record a Date" (AKA Time stamp indicating it was moved to the main sheet with the Children) to a delete sheet. Once you set this up your Template should constantly remain clean without a pile of submissions stacking up.

It will take 3 sheets because Smartsheets doesn't have an automation for delete but it shouldn't be too difficult to set up and shouldn't require any maintenance once everything is working other than to delete the "Trash sheet". I set up a few automatons like this and it works pretty well, I didn't have "Child Rows" but it shouldn't be too different.

Concerns: I would worry if you had a high risk of multiple forms coming in at the same time, if there is a low risk of this happening then usually the automatons can keep up. I would say so long as the submissions are spaced about 5 - 10 minutes apart you should be fine, but anything under 5 would risk a copy that contains two submissions but only one set of Children. I have tested the record a date and Copy/move feature and it does pay attention to the time stamp of the row change but its a risk I had to mention.