DataMesh and Parent/Child Rows

Melanie Sanders

Hello, I have a few mappings set up for city in my sheet where if they match, the address will automatically populate when the new row is added. I have recently also assigned Child rows to my parent rows and the DataMesh is not working on them only the parent rows. How can I fix this?

Genevieve P.

Hi @Melanie Sanders

The set-up currently has the CITY column as your Lookup Value. This is the value it's using to match across the sheets and pull in information.

Based on your screen capture, the cells in your Child Rows don't have any data in that CITY column, which means there's nothing for the DataMesh to Mesh, does that make sense?

How are you populating the CITY column?

Cell linking will link the cell from the source, which means that if an update happens in that specific cell in the source sheet it will automatically update the destination sheet (without DataMesh running). See: Cell Linking

Cheers,

Genevieve

Genevieve P.

Hi @Melanie Sanders

DataMesh shouldn't treat Parent and Child rows differently, but this may depend on your set-up. Can you confirm that these Child rows contain the Lookup Values that your configuration is searching for?

It would be helpful to see a screen capture of your two sheets, as well as the third configuration tab that shows the mapping in your workflow, but please block out sensitive data!

Cheers,

Genevieve

Ariana Arden

Hi Melanie,

I also have sheets that use DataMesh on parent and child rows, but we don't usually see an issue. Does the condition being used as the lookup value in the DataMesh also appear in your child rows? Or is it confined to the parent row? If it appears in both, your DataMesh should run.

Not sure if the above makes sense written out, so I've added this example. We use this for product information. The text in the Product column is used for the DataMesh lookup, so it pulls in the Group information for the child lines as well as the parent.

If for any reason you don't want the lookup value to appear on the child lines as it does on the parent lines, you can always use the =PARENT() formula on the child row.

Hope this helps! 😊

Melanie Sanders

Hello @Genevieve P. and @Ariana Arden

Here are my screen shots. The first is my target sheet where you can see City is in both the source and target sheets. The first column is my primary column and I have played with having something in there or not as the line text items I manually entered. I also have removed the parent/child to the second line and it still doesn't bring in the address in my target sheet.

The second is my source sheet

And this is the DataMesh I set up.

I have tried to fully understand the difference between cell linking and Copy and Copy and Add but it really doesn't make sense to me.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Ladies!

Genevieve P.

Hi @Melanie Sanders

The set-up currently has the CITY column as your Lookup Value. This is the value it's using to match across the sheets and pull in information.

Based on your screen capture, the cells in your Child Rows don't have any data in that CITY column, which means there's nothing for the DataMesh to Mesh, does that make sense?

How are you populating the CITY column?

Cell linking will link the cell from the source, which means that if an update happens in that specific cell in the source sheet it will automatically update the destination sheet (without DataMesh running). See: Cell Linking

Cheers,

Genevieve

Melanie Sanders

@Genevieve P. You Rock!! I had the incorrect value for the lookup value for my target sheet! Thanks for taking a look. I have been working on too many different SS projects lately and my brain isn't working correctly. Thanks for explaining the cell linking for dummies. I get it now.

Do you know how to auto-assign a new row to a parent row automatically based on city? That would be super awesome if I can figure that out.

Thanks again!

Genevieve P.

Hi @Melanie Sanders

I'm glad this works for you! I completely understand the feeling of looking at too many things. My morning coffee is what gets me through each day!

There currently isn't a way to automate hierarchy in Smartsheet (auto-assign child rows). That said, you could potentially pull a Report from this sheet and GROUP by City, keeping all those rows together. Would grouping work for you?

Melanie Sanders

Hi @Genevieve P.

Unfortunately a report won't show up in gantt view so the report function wouldn't work. Thanks so much!

Melanie