Sync column changes across multiple reports

Alan Rappa

Greetings my Smartsheeters-in-crime,

And Happy Friday, all.

Random question of the day here

We have 60 product managers here all working off of a shared roadmap.

I built a report, then modified it (yes, 60 times) for each of the product managers to just show their projects

Well, as you could have guessed, after agreeing on a format for the reports and after I created all 60 instances the consensus wants to make a change.

It's not too traumatic to go into each report and make the change, but I was wondering if there is a better way to do this.

Is there a way to create a master, parent report template that syncs changes to any children reports?

Or, is there just a better way to work to avoid this from happening again (and again, and again...)

Thanks a ton,

-Alan

Genevieve P.

Hi Alan,

When you say to "just show their projects", would you mind clarifying? Do you have a Contact Column in your roadmap that is assigned to these Product Managers?

I'm wondering if you could create just one master Report that uses the current user filter, instead of individually having 1-report-per-person. (See the who section, here). As long as those users are logged into Smartsheet, then they will only see the relevant rows associated with their account/email. Would that work?

Cheers!

Genevieve

Genevieve P.

Hi Alan,

When you say to "just show their projects", would you mind clarifying? Do you have a Contact Column in your roadmap that is assigned to these Product Managers?

I'm wondering if you could create just one master Report that uses the current user filter, instead of individually having 1-report-per-person. (See the who section, here). As long as those users are logged into Smartsheet, then they will only see the relevant rows associated with their account/email. Would that work?

Cheers!

Genevieve

Alan Rappa

Hi @Genevieve P

Sorry for not clarifying - yes, there is a contact column in the roadmap defining who the particular PM is on a project.

I am super intriqued about the concept about 'current user'. Going to dig in to that, as that sounds just what I'm looking for.

Thanks!

Genevieve P.

Oh good! If all the other criteria is the exact same, and it's just the user who is different, I think this would be the best/easiest route for you as then you'd only have one report to manage.

You can also embed this Report on a Dashboard, and as long as you adjust the Advanced Settings to display Dashboard Viewer it will again filter the results of the report to look different depending on who's logged in (see here for more information).

Let me know if you have any questions about it!

Mark Candela

I have a similar situation where I have reports that span across multiple regions. Same report layout just looking at a different filter column. I basically start with one report, copy it 6 times and update the filter and save it accordingly. If I add a column or make a change, I need to do it 7 times.

It would be nice to have master template report that is filtered by a specific column that automatically updates based upon the master.

Msherrill

I am having a similar problem and would love a way to bulk update reports. I am creating several reports from the same sheet with nearly identical fields. If I make a change to the master sheet or fields needed it is quite tedious to go in and update all of my reports.