Template, building-bricks database

Charles DESCOTES

How do you guys work out building-bricks to pick from a template say, or a close example?

(since we cannot copy/paste or transfer rows into another sheet without losing predecessor connections)

Travis

Charles - could you provide a little more information about your question? Also, it may be possible someone could provide a better solution or a workaround if you explained your workflow and the reasons behind it. Thanks!

Charles DESCOTES

Thank for this opportunity.

To make it simple, say we have a smartsheet called TEMPLATE:

It has several big parent rows, called Stage1, Stage2 and Stage3.

Under each Stage, there are several Options. Each Option is a pack of logically-connected tasks:

.Stage1

..Option1.a.

...Tasks of Option1.a.

..Option1.b.

...Tasks of Option1.b.

..Option1.c.

...

.Stage2

..Option2.a.

...

..Option2.b.

.Stage3

..Option3.a.

...

..Option3.b.

...

..Option3.c.

"Options" are what I called "building bricks". Each Option actually includes a series of tasks in smartsheet, which are related (by Predecessor) to each other and to some tasks in the rest of the Template. Options are a pack of tasks we may say.

Hence a given project could be such:

.Stage0

..Various tasks

.Stage1

..Option1.a.

...Tasks of Option1.a.

..Option1.c.

.Stage2

..Option2.b.

.Stage3

..Option3.b.

.Stage4

..Various tasks

So there we don't see the links but imagine that Option1.a. contains 20 tasks that are related, we need to keep these relationships once we copy/paste the Option1.a. pack to another smartsheet. It would be Ok to only lose the connections of the pack to the rest of the project and merely restore these.

This issue is similar to using part of an existing project (not a template) into a similar new project.

Sorry for the lengthy answer. Does it make it clearer?

Travis

Thanks for going into detail about this. There won’t be a way to keep those references when moving the rows between your sheets but i will pass your feedback along to the product team.  You are moving chunks of tasks from a template sheet to your working sheets. Would it be possible with your processes to start the working sheets with all these template tasks (possibly collapsed under a single parent row) then move them around your sheet as needed?

Dean Krontz

Charles,

I use a master template for our various projects. We constructed it in such a way to make it universal to fit our various projects. When the project is assigned we save the template as a new sheet and rename from the template as apposed to copy and paste specific rows into a new sheet. If a Project Manager finds they do not need task they delete them or add tasks. Of course we are in a Technology Services company so the tasks do not vary greatly between projects. We also have process flow standards in place between our branches. This ensures that if a project manager works at branch A and transfers to branch B there are not major differences in workflow processes. We do have one branch that handles manufacturing which required a seperate master template since the processes were unique to their branch.

 

Without more information about how your company is structured and the type of work I'm affraid this is the only suggetion I can offer. Ensure your master template is well planned out and do a save as new and rename the sheet.

 

Hope some of this helps.

Charles DESCOTES

Yes Dean, we might go this way in the future...

Jeremy Michels

To add to this. Some one can correct me if I am wrong. The thing that blocks this from working is that Charles is copying a sum row or parent row. If the rows that he was copying are not parent rows or sum rows the copy should work in a linked cell transfer. 

Travis

Jeremy - predecessors will not copy over when copying/moving rows even if you are only selecting child rows

Brian the intern23

Travis,

In my opinion not being able to copy over predecessors is a significant flaw with this software. It would be much simpler to be able to copy over predecessors rather than coming up with an intricate self-made system to get around this problem. I'm seeing this issue come up in many other forums.

-Brian