Use of one sheet as List for other Smartsheet

SANJAY KUMAR

I am trying to select Project names in my action tracker smartsheet. The Project names has been maintained as separate Smartsheet. How to link Project name sheet as List in my action tracker sheet.

Tony Coleman

If i understand the question correctly you are trying to run a dropdown list which is pre-populated from a central Projects control list.   i don't think this is possible, but a number of posts already exist - might be worth following these

 

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/sheet-generate-dropdown-list

or searching on the community - 

https://community.smartsheet.com/search-results?keywords=dropdown+from+another+sheet&community%5B1%5D=1&Community=Search

 

 

SANJAY KUMAR

Thanks, Yes i am looking for dropdown list which is pre-populate from other project list. But, as mentioned, this is not possible. Is there any way-out or work-around to achieve this functionality.

Tony Coleman

Not yet had to do it myself, but if you look at the first post -  

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/sheet-generate-dropdown-list - Craig Williams suggested a contact to talk through a solution with.   Alternatively there is Azuqua and Appsheet as options, depends on how complex you are willing to put up with.

Richard Rymill SBP

Sanjay

Tony Coleman is right and my colleague at Smarter Business processes, Craig Williams has previously answered this question. To clarify what is possible, but only if you use a 3rd party App to assist Smartsheet, like Azuqua or Appsheet..... 

 

Many Smartsheet users would like to see a single Dropdown list that can be replicated in as many sheets that would like to source that list ,eg a parts List, so only one sheet  needs modification  yet many sheets would benefit. 

So far Smartsheet have not been able to create this feature although it has received many votes. You can create this effect using Azuqua but there is a significant cost, so depends if the gain is woth the pain? Or it may be possible to use Appsheet in a slightly different way, but likely to introduce lots of other benefits too for a modest cost. 

If you want to know more and can justify some expense, then we offer a free initial consultancy. If you have NO budget for this, then just Create your list for the dropdown and copy paste it to all your sheets that wish to use it? it is manual labour but quite effective and at no cost except your own time?

 

Hope that Helps? 

RichardR

J. Craig Williams

SANJAY,

 

I have three other alternatives in my pocket.

 

1. If you used forms to fill out your data, one customer uses Gravity Forms in a WordPress website with dropdowns populated from sheets in Smartsheet. This was written in PHP.

 

2. The API (which (1) uses too) can be accessed to update the dropdown list. The code is fairly simple - it is only a matter of how scalable it is.

 

3. Add an alert on any changes to the master project list sheet (assuming it only used for this purpose). The alert goes to an intern / jr admin or some other cheaper resource with instructions to update the dropdowns on the sheets manually.

A customer had outsourced such tasks to a resource in SE Asia at a ridiculously low wage but he was making more per hour doing this than his day job all day.

I haven't tried it yet, but have seen it in operation and it works.

 

Craig