interconnecting several sheets (to manage employee action items)

Is it possible to share 2 or more interconnected sheets such that there is a parent sheet and multiple child sheets and the parent rolls up the info on the child sheets, allowing any changes on either the parent or child shows up for the other users? The key is that this needs to be bi-directional like normal smartsheet functionality and allow the info to be truly shared.

use case

I am trying to create a master sheet (employee action items by department) that connects with separate sheets that each of my direct reports updates with his/her progress on action items. Both my direct reports and I should be able to add/remove rows on the list of items and it synchronizes between both sheets, no matter if I or the employee made the change. The goal is to be able to use these during my 1 on 1 meetings with direct reports and the employee only sees his/her sheet but my master sheet rolls up all the employee smartsheets. This will allow me to manage all the employee lists much more easily through 1 sheet instead of many others.

thanks for any guidance on this.

Jeff

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Comments

J. Craig Williams

Jeff,

Check out Reports.

While you won't be able to delete a row from the Report, you can edit the sheet from there.

One master Sheet for you, each employee has their own Report.

If you set up to only shown non-completed tasks and show the task complete column (typically either % Complete or a Completed/Done check box), from the Report, updating the item "done" will allow a refresh to remove it from the list.

But you'll still have it on your master Sheet.

Craig

Jeff C.

Thanks Craig, I just tried it and this looks close to the functionality that I'm looking for. Thanks for the tip. The only limitations I see are:

- reports have limited view functionality and formatting -- can't roll up or filter rows directly within a report (I have 15 direct reports so having all their action items show up at once is a little daunting. I recognize that I can filter the report by individual, but the quick access of a roll up is what I'm hoping Smartsheet offers instead of running a new report for each).
- (most important) to add a task on an employee list I have to go to the employee smartsheet because I can't add it in to the report... so when I'm doing a brain dump of action items for employees I have a constant back and forth to each employee smartsheet instead of doing it all in a master sheet, which was my desire. With 15 direct reports it can get a little messy.

Since this is my first time using reports, perhaps I'm not using it right and the above can actually be accomplished?

Thanks for the tip! This is a huge step forward for me and I will use this if there isn't a better solution.

Jeff

J. Craig Williams

Jeff,

You can filter the Report contents - by who, what, where, when.

So you could have a Report that filters for your team members and only show the next two weeks or some other prioritized column

You can pull their tasks from either your sheet or theirs or both.

For me then main drawback for Reports is that that users only see the data if the underlying sheet(s) are shared to them. In your case, that may not be a problem because you are showing data (from your sheet and theirs) and are shared to both.

You can also filter the report by name or date to make it seem like a rollup, even though it isn't.