Form with option to direct data to different sheets?

James Keuning

Each of my projects has a task sheet. Every task sheet is the same in terms of the fields. I know I can use a form to add a task to a sheet. But I’d like to have a one-stop place to enter tasks for any of my sheets. Is there any way to do this?

I’m sitting here thinking I could/should use one big sheet for all of my tasks for all my projects. Any downside to this? Granularity of security is one thing that occurs to me. As it is, I use cross-sheet formulas to consolidate my data from the sheets into one sheet for reporting... so maybe I just stumbled on the answer while I’m typing this. For working on the sheet I’ll need to crate a filter for each project, and then more filters for active/inactive... and that will be a lot of filters.

Paul Newcome

I can think of a couple of options right off. My initial thought I keep coming back to though is kind of a "central hub" setup.

You could create the form for each sheet, then use a dashboard with a series of web content widgets to put each form on the dashboard. You could also include a widget with links to each of your sheets on this dashboard.

You could then enter new tasks for any project directly from the dashboard (set form to open a new copy of the form upon submission) and you would be able to jump directly to any of your project sheets straight from the dashboard.

In all reality though, it is much easier to manage if you have one master sheet and then create separate reports for each project.

James Keuning

Thanks for the thoughts on this. I spent to much time thinking about this and moving stuff around, but I did settle on a solution:

Automation!

I just make one form and a receiver sheet. The Receiver sheet routes its data to the correct form. The only set up is that every time I create a new project with a new task sheet I need to:

a) add a workflow for that new sheet to the receiver sheet.

b) add the sheet name for the new project to the Dropdown choices in the receiver sheet, so that it show up on the form.