best way to convert excel tracker to smartsheet

MazU

Hi all

whats the best way to convert this tracker on smartsheet

any ideas will be appreciated

@Paul Newcome tagging as always for your advice please

Paul Newcome

@Maz Uddin That particular one was

=IF(COUNT(CHILDREN([Primary Column]@row)) = 0, PARENT([Primary Column]@row))

But there are a lot of different ways to pull it depending on the structure of your sheet and your exact needs.

SteCoxy

Could you use https://help.smartsheet.com/learning-track/level-1-get-started/rows-and-hierarchy where Development is the Primary column and then have that as the parent row with the children rows underneath that list the various documents associated underneath?

MazU

@SteCoxy not a bad idea and probably makes sense. Will give it a go actually… thank you

Paul Newcome

Depending on your reporting needs, I tend to avoid hierarchy simply because I usually end up having to pull parent row data down onto child rows anyway. With grouping and whatnot in reports, I generally have my users working in those or Dynamic Views. I very rarely have anyone working in the actual source sheet itself, so it doesn't usually need to be kept too clean.

MazU

@SteCoxy not a bad idea and probably makes sense. Will give it a go actually… thank you

SteCoxy

that's a great shout about Dynamic View, Paul. We haven't got this unfortunately at our organisation. This is true that sometimes you need the information that's in the parent rows in the children rows too, in order for it to make sense in a report.

MazU

@Paul Newcome Hi Paul, are you able to give an example when you say 'end up having to pull parent row data down onto child rows'

Trying to visualize when this situation can ever apply to any of the reports I produce… if you have time i would appreciate it but not a huge deal

I'm utilizing rows and hierarchy for the screenshot I displayed in my original post.

Paul Newcome

Imagine you want to create a filter to show rows where the parent is a specific value, or you are running metrics with COUNTIFS or SUMIFS and need to filer those by "section" or parent row. The only way to accomplish this would be to have the parent data on every child row.

MazU

Thank you Paul, this makes a lot of sense to me now.

Also, what formula did you use to pull the parent task name in there please?

appreciate you advice, thank you

Andrée Starå

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/436873#Comment_436873

Hi,

I hope you're well and safe!

Try something like this.

=PARENT([Primary Column]@row)

Did 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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Paul Newcome

@Maz Uddin That particular one was

=IF(COUNT(CHILDREN([Primary Column]@row)) = 0, PARENT([Primary Column]@row))

But there are a lot of different ways to pull it depending on the structure of your sheet and your exact needs.