Record Changes for Report

Ryan Jackson

I work for a construction company, and am building a dashboard for our management team. They want to have a metric that shows how many times the schedule was changed by the Site Supervisor so they can measure how often they are using Smartsheet.

Since we can't extract data from the Activity Log without downloading to Excel, I was playing around with copying modified rows to a new sheet. This way I could filter by supervisor, and also create counts of changes per month.

The issue is when using the copy rows automation will copy all of the modified rows over, since dependencies are enabled. Is there a way to copy over only the row that was directly modified by the supervisor without bringing in the other tasks that automatically change?

Paul Newcome

Do you need how many times within a day the item is updated or just that it was updated "today" and "yesterday" and "the day before", etc.?

Is it possible the supervisor could be accessing Smartsheet without the need to change the schedule? If so, would you want to track that too?

Ryan Jackson

Hey Paul,

Thanks for the reply.

Management would like to know how many changes the Supervisor is making per month. They're not particularly picky on knowing exactly when the schedule was updated.

It is possible the Supervisor will view the schedule without making any changes, but we are not concerned about tracking views.

Is it possible to separate the changes the Supervisor makes vs ones that I might make as the PM? Say the Supervisor mangles the sheet and I have to fix it, is there a way it can be done so my changes don't skew the metrics?

Paul Newcome

I would start with adding the system generated Modified By column and then using a Copy Row automation set to trigger when the column changes to that user's email address.

From there you could create a report that is grouped by date and use a summary in the report to include the counts.

Ryan Jackson

Hey Paul,

Is there a way to bring over the single row that is directly changed by the user? Because of the dependencies, it brings over the rows that Smartsheet adjusts the date for as well.

Paul Newcome

You would have to get the supervisor to flag whatever row(s) they changed. You can use a manual flag column and set your copy row automation to run based on this column being flagged and then use a clear cell automation to unflag it in case the supervisor needs to change it again later on.

Andrée Starå

Hi @Ryan Jackson

I hope you're well and safe!

To add to Paul's excellent advice/answer.

Another option (If I understand your request correctly)

• You could add a helper column that would either JOIN or combine multiple columns, which you want to check if they are changed, and then have them copied to the other sheet.

Would that work/help?

I hope that helps!

Be safe, and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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