Data Meshing from a report to another sheet wipes out the data

BethWork

I created a reported and I then exported that report into Excel and then uploaded that Excel into Smartsheets as it's own sheet.

I want to be able to data mesh from the report to the target sheet, but even though it's identical information when I data mesh it wipes out all of the information from my Assigned To column. This is my first attempting data meshing from a report, but I double checked my mesh and all of the columns are correctly matching.

Is there something different about using a report as the source sheet when data meshing?

Tim C

For this scenario, you could put a "milestone" checkbox on your sheet for just the parent tasks, check all of those boxes and add a filter for the "checked box is a milestone". This will pull just those most important taka over. If you are looking to keep the parent and children rows but still see the Gantt I personally don't know a way to do that. When you collapse the Gantt at the parent level, the children task bars in Gantt go away because they don't have a physical location to be.

Tim C

Hello! Just curious if there is reason you're offloading the sheet to excel then just re uploading it?

When you export data from Smartsheet to Excel, then bring excel data back in, you have to reconfigure drop downs and contact lists for data validation in Smartsheet. Try checking the source and target sheets to make sure they the same column type. https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/504553-import-files-to-create-new-sheets

You can use a report as a source for data mesh, might just want to double check your unique identifier also didn't get mixed up in the data transfer. https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2483040-create-data-mesh-config

If that doesn't work, post some screenshots and we can attempt to fix it.

BethWork

@Tim C

My thought process for doing it like this is because I need a method for playing around with project start and end dates using a Gantt view without actually changing the dates. I need the actual project dates to stay as they are, but essentially create a model of what it could look like if dates and resources were shifted. We're trying to show leadership where are resources are dedicated and aren't quite ready to just shift things around yet until we have a defined process. I need that information to data mesh as changes are made so it's not a manual process for that "projected" sheet. I'll also data mesh information from several other sheets to help with that.

Yes, I double checked my unique identifiers and they are not mixed up which is what stumped me. It wipes out all the information in several columns. It wipes ou the information in the last four columns.

I don't know if you need to know the column headers, too.

Tim C

Thank you for the context! DataMesh uses the API to write from one sheet to another. When dependencies are enabled, unfortunately it can't write to the end date because of the API limitation. Here is a great answer on this topic. https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/56021/datamesh-gantt-charts

If it's a different issue, then I'd submit a support ticket to get alsome eyes on it.

BethWork

@Tim C Thank you! That makes sense. I didn't see this response back for some reason last week weirdly. I appreciate it.

BethWork

@Tim C Maybe there's another approach I can take.

The ultimate goal is to be able to see the list of all projects and their accompanying resources in a single report. That report is going to be shared out with other parts of the business to show where resources are allocated.

It does an excellent job of pulling in this information into a single report, but it's best viewed in a Gantt view. However, in order to see more than one or two projects on a screen at a time I have to collapse the project name in the report and then lose the ability to see the Gantt view. Is there a way to maintain the Gantt view after collapsing a menu in a report?

I need to keep it grouped by Project Name.

Tim C

For this scenario, you could put a "milestone" checkbox on your sheet for just the parent tasks, check all of those boxes and add a filter for the "checked box is a milestone". This will pull just those most important taka over. If you are looking to keep the parent and children rows but still see the Gantt I personally don't know a way to do that. When you collapse the Gantt at the parent level, the children task bars in Gantt go away because they don't have a physical location to be.