Dashboard/Report not updating

aneekahTAL

Andrée Starå how did you resolve this issue?

I have a similar problem - I have a dashboard that shows our management team which projects are finishing in the current month and which are starting next month. However the reports that feed the dashboard are not automatically refreshing as the months change. The underlying sheet data is calculated correctly. 

I have to manually refresh each report at the start of each month. This is a complete waste of time as there are many reports!

Andrée Starå

Hi,

Can you describe your process in more detail and maybe share the sheet(s) or some screenshots? (Delete/replace any confidential/sensitive information before sharing) That would make it easier to help. (share too, andree@getdone.se)

Have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

TeeM

This issue has raised its ugly head again for another client of mine. See the following comment from the client....

"Every morning we have to refresh and open multiple sheets to accurately reflect overdue tasks and still it isn’t working. This is taking a considerable amount of time so we would like to overcome this issue ASAP."

Why don't the source sheets automatically refresh? Opening and refreshing each source sheet is not practical especially when there are many sheets involved. Management want to see accurate data on a dashboard and not waste time getting someone to manually refresh sheets before viewing.

flashock

At first i thought it cannot be solved with data connector. same issue happen, it won't show the latest refresh.

any news from support@smartsheet?

Rob Eberstein

I have experienced similar things with clients of mine. When I view a dashboard, it is not bringing back the right data from the sheets. I have explored this a little, and believe there is a problem with the TODAY() formula. I often use a Status which has the TODAY() formula in there. In the reports, I am filtering on the Status column. The implication of this for me is that you can't use the TODAY() formula in reports which are displayed in Dashboards.

Ezra

This was an ugly little annoyance that we managed to hack/solve with a Zapier routine. I'd have to go back into last year's notes to give you the full enchilada of information, but long story short.. one sheet gets updated with a zap of the current date/time. Then, every project data sheet, project gantt, budget sheet, etc.. contains a column that has the first row linked to that cell in that 'zapped' sheet. Just for good measure, I repeat that first cell down the entire column with a simple formula =[UpdateColumnThingy]$1 so every line is able to see that it has been updated.

Side note: In Control Center, I set up the archiving tasks to freeze/remove the link-in from the zapped sheet's cell (along with all the other linked-in cells' links). Since the archived projects don't change - they don't need the constant update 'touch' from users or Zapier automation for reporting.

Shane Walsh

Similar issue. The Dashboard updates during the day fine but once the time of day hits 00:00... as in a new day the dashboard feeder metrics sheet has to be opened and refreshed. Makes the whole functionality of the dashboard obsolete. I do use the Today() Formula in one cell and don't know if there are any work arounds?

Preston Murphy

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/253162#Comment_253162

Interesting. Our dashboard is highly dependent on the TODAY() function. It uses it for conditional formatting and to display a different set of rows per week. We use it for a daily meeting, but have no need to see any more rows than the ones for this week. For us, it appears when it switches to a new week, the report continues to look at the previous week's rows anyways. I go into the source sheet and look at the formula that marks the rows to be displayed and it clearly works, so either the formula isn't calculating until I open the sheet or the report doesn't "see" the changes in the source sheet.

Either way, this seems like a pretty massive flaw. Honestly, one of things I find to be the most useful and "cool" is to have formulas that check the current day, allowing for reports to automatically update for the whole entire year without any effort on my part. If TODAY() and reports are not working well together this is a massive missed opportunity. Not sure how it could unfixed for this long. It's hard to believe this is an issue that doesn't affect a large portion of the users.

Jamie Bedford

We have a user experiencing this issue, too. I also see an archived forum post from 2015 describing the same issue...

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/2297/sending-scheduled-reports-and-formatting

Is there a documented workaround for this yet? Any way to automate refreshing underlying sheets without needing to manually open them?

Mathijs Muller

@TeeM Did you solve the problem with your dashboards? I have exactly the same problem. Dashboard does not show the updated data from the reporting sheet in the background. If I login to the reporting sheet, it updates the figures, but I don't want to login to multiple sheets for the report sheet to be correct.

Gavin Worsley

Hello All. is this resolved issue as it happens to our reports too that rely on =Today() sum

Andrée Starå

Hi @Gavin Worsley

I hope you're well and safe!

Please have a look at my post below with a method I developed to update the sheet(s) daily.

More info: 

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/74527/daily-update-solution-without-the-need-to-open-the-sheet-use-zapier-or-similar

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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Gavin Worsley

Hello All. is this resolved issue as it happens to our reports too that rely on =Today() sum

Gavin Worsley

thank you @Andrée Starå I have set that up. lets see if it works for tomorrow (any way of testing before hand?? :-))

ericreyes

@TeeM @Andrée Starå Has this issue been solved yet? I have a report that is heavily reliant on the =Today() function and cannot use the solution proposed above.