Prioritize Order of Record Fulfillment

khankoff

I have a list of records in a worksheet, and would like for each of them to be prioritized 1 through ### (depending upon how many are in the list).  Each record needs to have a unique priority, because the order in which the record will be acted upon by an Owner will be determined by where it is ranked in the prioritization.  Therefore the number can't be used more than once in the list.

Can this be done?  How?  Via a formula?  Need some guidance.

Thank you.

Andrée Starå

Hi,

Can you describe your process in more detail and maybe share the sheet(s) or some screenshots? That would make it easier to help. (share too, andree@getdone.se)

Have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

Paul Newcome

You would need to be able to clearly define your criteria to be able to put this into a formula for an automation. If you are able to define that and maybe provide some screenshots, a solution could be found for you.

khankoff

Hi Andree,  

I don't have any useful screenshots, as I'm still building the solution.  However, if you picture a worksheet with three columns:

Column 1: Data Server

Column 2: Data Path

Column 3: Data Scan Priority

There could be many many records in the worksheet, and the goal is to provide the an order in which the records should be Data Scanned (scanning is a separate process).  So if the first three records in the list had a Data Scan Priority of 2,3,1, then the third record would actually be scanned first, the first record scanned second, and the second record scanned third.  

I'd like to have a way of preventing someone from entering the first three records as something like 1, 2, 1, because having two 1's would confuse the team responsible for performing the data scan (they would have to resolve which of the two 1's in the list was actually a priority).

Just wondering if this could be done programmatically.

Ken

khankoff

Thanks Paul, but I'm not trying to have a formula actually set the priority.  Just wondering whether it would be possible to prevent someone from entering the same priority number (say 5th in the list) more than once.  

The goal is to use the data scan priority as the order in which data records are scanned (scanning is a separate process).  So the formula would not allow 1,2,3,4,5,5,5,6,7,8,9,etc.  It would not be possible to enter 5 (or any other number currently in use) more than once.

Ken

Paul Newcome

Unfortunately you cannot accomplish exactly what you are looking for within Smartsheet. All you can do is use a formula to flag a duplicate entry and then use Alerts and/or Update Requests and Conditional formatting to bring it to their attention for correction.

Andrée Starå

Ok.

I saw that Paul answered.

Let me know if I can help with anything else.

Best,

Andrée