Work Insights query - are all the columns meant to be selectable?

.Leon.

Hi - I recently noticed that Work Insights is now live - quick question - when using the Column snapshot option to generate an Insight - I noticed that not all the columns in my sheet are actually selectable.

Is this meant to be the case?

Any guidance on this?

Thanks!

Genevieve P.

Hi @.Leon.

What about adding in a new Dropdown column to your sheet first, then copying/pasting all the values over in one go from the Text Column.

Once the new column exists with the correct values, you can adjust your Conditional Formatting rules to look at the new column (instead of deleting/recreating).

Then when all the rules are looking at the right column, you can delete the old, empty one.

I hope that helps!

Genevieve

Genevieve P.

@.Leon.

Formulas are a good point... formulas and Reports. If you change a column type or add a new column you'll need to make sure this is included or updated in the Reports that look at that sheet.

Same thing with Formulas. The Formulas in the column will be fine, but any formulas that are looking at a specific column would need to have the reference adjusted to look at the new/correct column.

When you have a moment, it will be really helpful for the Product team to hear from you about this new feature! This form is the best way to let them know your thoughts on Work Insights directly. Thank you!

Genevieve

.Leon.

Hi Genevieve - I saw you answered this in another post - https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/85098/work-insights-column-not-available-to-select

However to add to this problem statement - for me to convert the columns to be a Dropdown it requires them to have no formatting applied.

Thus I now need to delete 30+ conditional formatting rules to be able to convert the column type in just the first sheet I am looking at applying this to.

Disabling the formatting doesn't appear to have fixed this, so I will need to delete them all then recreate just to be able to enable Work Insights.

Any chance this can be fixed/addressed in the near future?

.Leon.

If we convert all standard Text/Number columns into Dropdowns so that we can enable Work Insights on those columns as well - what is the impact this may have on my formulas later on?

Is there a negative impact to converting standard Text/Number columns into Dropdowns that I need to be aware of?

Genevieve P.

Hi @.Leon.

I'm glad my answer on another post helped with your question.

Dropdowns are just another way to store your text values as a set list of options. I don't believe there should be an impact on your formulas then, as I presume you're searching for a specific text value (which will appear either in a Dropdown or a Text/Num).

Cheers,

Genevieve

.Leon.

Thanks - is there an easier work around than deleting all the conditional formatting on the impacted columns, then recreating it from scratch just to get Work Insights working?

Genevieve P.

Hi @.Leon.

What about adding in a new Dropdown column to your sheet first, then copying/pasting all the values over in one go from the Text Column.

Once the new column exists with the correct values, you can adjust your Conditional Formatting rules to look at the new column (instead of deleting/recreating).

Then when all the rules are looking at the right column, you can delete the old, empty one.

I hope that helps!

Genevieve

.Leon.

I am using Data Mesh extensively to import new rows / data into the sheet. So if I do that - then it creates more work to retrospectively go in and update the Data Mesh configurations as well.

I guess for now though you raise a good point - anything that has a formula in it - can't be as a result of data mesh, so those ones I can easily do a simple column clone & formatting shift as suggested.

Ideally - if we can edit the column type whilst still having conditional formatting applied, or be able to apply Work Insights to any column type, that would be the preferred path forward long-term.

Thanks!

Genevieve P.

@.Leon.

Formulas are a good point... formulas and Reports. If you change a column type or add a new column you'll need to make sure this is included or updated in the Reports that look at that sheet.

Same thing with Formulas. The Formulas in the column will be fine, but any formulas that are looking at a specific column would need to have the reference adjusted to look at the new/correct column.

When you have a moment, it will be really helpful for the Product team to hear from you about this new feature! This form is the best way to let them know your thoughts on Work Insights directly. Thank you!

Genevieve

.Leon.

That seems overly burdensome for something that could be such an easy fix - I don't have many reports built out as yet - but I can imagine anyone with a mature dashboard setup will find this challenging to properly implement without extensive manual effort.

Thanks.