Reports: GROUP BY <VALUE> and Parent/Child Hierarchy

johnvilsack · 03/04/19

Question 1: I'm pulling multiple reports together. I can't figure out how to issue any sort of GROUP BY clause. Please tell me how.

Question 2: How do I pull Parent/Child meaningfully into a report? It doesn't seem to honor the relationship any time I sort.

Alejandra · 03/06/19

Hello,

At this time, row hierarchies aren't displayed in reports. When you have a moment, please submit a Product Enhancement Request (you’ll find a link to this here in Community under Quick links on the right).

A potential workaround could be to add a checkbox column to your sheet and check the box in every parent row. In the report builder the What criteria could be "For Reporting Column is Checked". Keep in mind, sorting the report will rearrange all rows, including parent rows.

If you're goal is to display parent row information, you could create a new column in your sheet —I would name the column something like "Parent Details". You can then insert this formula to return parent row information:

=JOIN(ANCESTORS([Task Name]@row), " / ")

In order to sort rows by a group, you could consider creating a dropdown list column and defining the different groups in the values text box. In the report builder, you could sort in ascending or descending order based on the "Group By" column you created.

More information on reporting can be found in our help article: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/522214-creating-reports

johnvilsack · 03/07/19

Alejandra,

Thank you for the response. Those workarounds would definitely add unnecessary complexity and noise to the report. I'll file an update request. I absolutely expected this to be a given, especially when you link multiple sources together, etc.