Form Drop Down Populated by Separate Sheets?

Taylor Compton - NOAA Federal

Is it possible to connect a drop down column in a sheet to another sheet as a lookup for relevant values? This would enable centralized control of values ensuring they are accurate for form submission. Looking at articles on Data Uploader, this would be too powerful for the specific use case below.

Obj: Users are only able to request features/enhancements to active projects.

Form field would be populated via a lookup to a separate sheet which pulls only active projects based upon the portfolio summary. As projects complete or are added the "active project sheet" would be dynamic and update, thereby altering the choice selections available for users in the form.

Andrée Starå

@Taylor Compton - NOAA Federal

Here's another article.

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2478361-data-uploader

• Update Dropdowns—Replace Smartsheet dropdown values in Column Properties, from values within your Excel or .csv file

Would that help?

The other option would be the Smartsheet API or another 3rd party solution.

Andrée Starå

Hi @Taylor Compton - NOAA Federal

A solution that might be perfect for this use-case is the premium add-on, Data Uploader.

Is that an option?

More info: 

https://www.smartsheet.com/marketplace/premium-apps/data-uploader

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

✅Did my post(s) help or answer your question or solve your problem? Please help the Community by marking it as the accepted answer/helpful. It will make it easier for others to find a solution or help to answer!

Taylor Compton - NOAA Federal

Good morning @Andrée Starå,

The articles I read seem that data uploader was more geared toward external Smartsheet data e.g. SQL tables. That is not ideal as it would split the data into two locations. That solution appears that I would need to create SQL tables to pull in "active projects" from Smartsheet, store in SQL, then push back to Smartsheet as a drop down column. An outcome of this ask is to streamline the process and keep it within Smartsheet. Does the data uploader connect between sheets?

Andrée Starå

@Taylor Compton - NOAA Federal

Here's another article.

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2478361-data-uploader

• Update Dropdowns—Replace Smartsheet dropdown values in Column Properties, from values within your Excel or .csv file

Would that help?

The other option would be the Smartsheet API or another 3rd party solution.

Taylor Compton - NOAA Federal

@Andrée Starå thanks for linking that article. Based on the text below, it only seems that data uploader would be able to integrate data within Smartsheet as an attachment. It may be a possible solution if I am able to create an attachment based on a report run of active projects. Still seems clunky and cost prohibitive for an active project list which is only ~30. I appreciate your input.

Andrée Starå

@Taylor Compton - NOAA Federal

Happy to help!

Yes, I agree, and it would be great if we had a syncing feature between dropdown lists.

Please submit an Enhancement Request when you have a moment

✅Remember! Did my post(s) help or answer your question or solve your problem? Please help the Community by marking it as the accepted answer/helpful. It will make it easier for others to find a solution or help to answer!

Nancy Kuhns

Have there been any upgrades/updates made in this area in the last 2.5 years or is Data Uploader still the best way to do this?

Andrée Starå

Hi @Nancy Kuhns

I hope you're well and safe!

Unfortunately, It's still Data Shuttle, the Smartsheet API, or a 3rd-party service/solution that is the option, but it's still an excellent idea!

To add your vote! Please submit this as a Product Feedback or Idea (If it hasn't been added already) when you have a moment.

I hope that helps!

Be safe, and have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

✅Did my post(s) help or answer your question or solve your problem? Please support the Community by marking it Insightful/Vote Up, Awesome, or/and as the accepted answer. It will make it easier for others to find a solution or help to answer!

marc4

We find that there are two ways to do it:

If you only need to update a few sheets, then we have the master sheet and use Data Shuttle Offload to export the data to update the pulldown as a single column csv and then one Data Shuttle Upload to update the dropdown for each sheet.

In one of our situations we have hundreds of sheets to update so we use Data Shuttle Offload to export the data as a single column csv. Then we have a small script that uses the API to walk through every sheet in every workspace looking for a column with a specific name and update that column with the data from the csv.

Now that we have the script, it's easy to just change the name of the field we are looking for and the csv file to use to update the data.

/marc