How to identify if a checkbox has ever been checked

Meredith Rhodes

Good morning, friends of Smartsheet,

I need some help working through a process.

I have a worksheet that has a checkbox column called 'escalate'. When we check that box, the row shows up on a report that our Compliance group can see, so they know their assistance is needed in some sort of communication efforts.

Once the issue is resolved, we uncheck the box and it falls off their report.

So, it's a dynamic column.

I would like create a column that indicates whether the checkbox has ever been checked, and how many times it was checked (essentially - accessing the history of that cell to use in a report).

I can easily see how to record a date when it is checked, but is there a way to record every-time it is checked?

Thanks for your advice on this.

Meredith

Matt Johnson

Hi @Meredith Rhodes

One way you could capture this, for everything going forward, would be to set up an automation to copy the row to another sheet whenever the check box is checked. Then you could do the counts off that other sheet. Just make sure the other sheet is clearly labeled as that and limit access to maybe just yourself.

There's probably other ways to do it too but I hope this option helps.

Have a great day.

Matt

Meredith Rhodes

That is a good idea, @Matt Johnson - I can play around with that a bit to see if it works for me.

Maybe I can create a sheet summary off that sheet to feed a dashboard…. hmmm.

Matt Johnson

You're on the right path. I would use a whole another sheet. Using a Metric Sheet for dashboards is great because you can position the data in different ways to accomodate all sorts of graphs and charts.