Input form to trigger creation of new project based on existing template with form data?

Donald Herring

I want to use a form to collect basic new-hire information and then trigger the creation of a new project based on an existing project template which has matching fields such as FirstName, LastName, HireDate.

How can one accomplish this? The template project has a lot of entries and assignments for credential creation, hardware/software ordering, hardware/software installation and training.

Template is called "New Hire Template" and would be nice if the automation would include the name of the person because I'd imagine the list of project will get very large and unwieldy. Example: "New Hire - John Doe"

Andrée Starå

Hi @Donald Herring

I hope you're well and safe!

How many hires could be on a monthly/yearly basis?

• If you want to automate it as much as possible, then a solution that would be perfect for this use case is the premium add-on, Control Center.

More info: 

https://www.smartsheet.com/marketplace/premium-apps/control-center

• Another option would be to develop a template connected to the main sheet with a unique value that we'd use to collect the information to the individual sheet. (VLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH)

Make sense?

Would any of those options work/help?

Let me know if you want to explore Control Center or the other option.

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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Donald Herring

It is unknown as to the amount per month but I'd imagine the project list will be a bit cluttered-looking after 200 hires have been processed.

Our company has the Enterprise plan but I do not know if we have or can acquire additional components. That is over my pay grade so I'd like to try and utilize whatever is currently available if possible.

I'm new to Smartsheet so I will have to look into INDEX/MATCH/VLOOKUP and figure out how those are used.

But I did not see anything in the automation / trigger prompts for creating / naming a new project based on a template...most I saw was copying rows of data from one sheet to another.

https://help.smartsheet.com/function/match

https://help.smartsheet.com/function/index

https://help.smartsheet.com/function/vlookup

Thanks

Andrée Starå

@Donald Herring

Happy to help!

Unfortunately, there isn't a way to automate the naming (without Control Center or similar), so the best way would be to have a default naming structure that is easy to replace.

Make sense?

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Donald Herring

Ok but what is the trigger when a row updates in the new hire sheet that causes the creation of a new project based on an existing project?

Or is the creation of a new project a manual process?