How to create a form that dynamically expands number of rows of data for a single question?

Arvind Manoharan

Hello,

I am attempting to create a Smartsheet form that resembles an Excel design and want to understand the best process when creating this.

Challenge: This particular form will be filled out by users to enter their expenses incurred for travel. Travel could have more than 1 taxi ride or multiple flight plans. Having a single line to capture the expenses incurred for a travel bucket (e.g. Taxi or Airfare or Meals) is not favorable. We need the ability for user to expand or collapse as many rows as needed within the form for a given travel category.

How can I achieve this? It appears that forms need a defined set of fields and cannot be dynamically managed.

Please advise.

Excel Sample that needs to be transformed into Smartsheet:

James Keuning

It appears that forms need a defined set of fields and cannot be dynamically managed

That's correct. I understand what you are trying to do, and I do not think that you are going to have a one-stop form for a user to create one parent record with a dynamically determined number of child records.

For one-to-many related data, you can use the primary column and indent the child records. Your user will need to know how to insert a record. And they will probably also need training on indenting because that inevitably goes wrong.

James Keuning

It appears that forms need a defined set of fields and cannot be dynamically managed

That's correct. I understand what you are trying to do, and I do not think that you are going to have a one-stop form for a user to create one parent record with a dynamically determined number of child records.

For one-to-many related data, you can use the primary column and indent the child records. Your user will need to know how to insert a record. And they will probably also need training on indenting because that inevitably goes wrong.