Best Practice: Intake Sheet & Secondary Sheet when 2-way sync is needed

NeilKY

We're working on a solution for a department that is similar to Uber without the bells and whistles. A call comes in when there's bad weather, a city employee "aka Dispatcher" looks to see who is available in our list of drivers and assigns them to pick the employee up.

I think my question is pretty simple? I'm having issues with how to set it up.

When the employee fills out the form with their address and when they need a ride, it goes into our "intake" sheet.

The dispatcher may need to change one of almost any of the values on the intake sheet at any point in the process: (eg. typo in the address, change date of pickup needed, etc.), plus they need to add values for who the driver is or other pickup status data. We also want the drivers to be able to mark someone as picked up or dropped off.

Do I want to allow the "Dispatcher" and drivers to modify the intake sheet or should we take one of several avenues next?

1. Link all cells in each column to a "dispatcher" sheet for them to update information on.
   1. Pro is that all the data is sync'd both ways so dispatcher can have a different column order than the intake sheet.
   2. Con: Links won't be reliable because user has to be able to update values so they might accidentally delete a link.
   3. Con: I have to manually add each range in each column and check on the sheet occasionally to ensure they are all still linked.
2. Create a "Dispatch" sheet that the "intake" sheet copies the rows to when new leads come in from the form, keeping the original data separate from dispatcher's modifications.
   1. Pro: Two different copies, so if dispatcher deletes something we have a backup.
   2. Con: We now have two copies of the data.
   3. Other: We could always just create a copy of every lead that comes in as a backup anyway.
3. Create a "report" of the Intake sheet that the dispatcher uses to update the intake sheet.
   1. Pro: No breaking of links
   2. Pro: Reliable links
   3. Con: Not as many options as a sheet has. Eg. easy filter switching, automations, formatting, etc.
4. Use Dynamic View and Workapps to display different views based on objective?
5. OTHER?

Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated!

mcullen

Hello @NeilKY,

I think Dynamic View and WorkApps could be an excellent solution.

Pros:

• Two-Way Data Sync: Information stays updated across both platforms, allowing dispatchers to have a different column order than the intake sheet.
• Custom Views: Dispatchers and drivers can each have personalized views, displaying only the columns relevant to their roles.
• Enhanced Functionality: Unlike reports, this setup retains all necessary features.
• Work App Integration: A WorkApp can streamline driver reporting, making it easy to log pickups and drop-offs via a mobile device.
• View-Only Controls: Certain cells can be restricted to "View Only," preventing the accidental deletion of important links.

If you've never worked with Dynamic View, here is a helpful resource: Dynamic View: Create and manage views of your data | Smartsheet Learning Center

Hope this helps!