Data Shuttle - Adding New Records

Mike Rini

Hi all -

I have a Data Shuttle process that runs when a new attachment is added. The goal of the process is to add all records in the attachment to the sheet, but I'm struggling b/c I need to map a Unique Column according to Data Shuttle for the Destination Sheet.

The process fails to load all of the sheet rows because after it loads the first new row, the others are held back because they aren't considered "unique." In the example below, the column "Name" is what I was mapping to, but after Row 1, it stops loading anything further.

Other than adding a Unique ID in the attachment, I can't think of another way to load this via Data Shuttle. Any thoughts?

Paul Newcome

Are you trying to add the new records in addition to the existing records, or would it work if you just had all of the data in the attachment overwrite all of the data in the Smartsheet?

Mike Rini

@Paul Newcome I'm trying to append (new records in addition to the existing).

Paul Newcome

In that case you are definitely going to need a unique identifier in the source document.

I haven't tested this, but it sounds like it should work.

Have an "initial upload" sheet that receives the attachment as is completely replacing everything. Use an auto-number column to generate a unique number on every row in this sheet.

Another Data Shuttle workflow offloads this Smartsheet as a csv file and attaches it to your Original Smartsheet.

A final Data Shuttle workflow runs on attachment and can be set up to add new rows as they are added to the source file because now the file has the auto-number column generating unique ids on every row.

The drawback from this (aside form the additional sheet and workflows) is that the offload can only happen on a time basis as frequently as 15 minutes.