I have been working on a somewhat complicated 5S audit for a while and I thought I would share one of my favorite ideas we have had.
We needed to create an audit sheet that was filterable by plant, then area, then by zone, and could have any amount of submissions per each zone, and included pictures and notes. We didn't want the auditors to have to type in the plant, area, and zone each time they input information, and we didn't want them to be in the Smartsheet itself.
So I created a powerpoint directory with hyperlinks allowing them to navigate to the pages with the area they are auditing. I hyperlinked the webpage with the URL filled with queries to auto update the web form and hid the plant, area, and zone in the web form. I saved the powerpoint as a show so it is uneditable on the userside, and saved the list of URLs in word as a template. Saving the URLs in word means I can use the replace function to replace the URL on all of the links while keeping the query meaning it is much easier to copy the form for other purposes.
The end result is the user opens the show, clicks links to navigate to their area, selects their area, and it opens the correct web form. They can fill it out as many times as they need to. When the smartsheet itself is actually opened it contains all applicable information to the audit carried out, with the user never having to input any of it other than the audit itself.
