Automating updates from shared Excel doc to a Smartsheet doc

Is there a way to automate updates from a shared Excel file to a Smartsheet doc?

I am currently manually entering data from an Excel file into a Smartsheet to update the information on a Sight. It would be great if the data was automatically updated in the Smartsheet when the shared Excel file is updated. Is that possible?

I recently upgraded our licenses to Business so we could get access to Sights. I know a live data connector came with that, but I have never used it. I searched for tutorials, but only found how to install the live data connector.

Please help. Thank you.

Monica

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Comments

Mike Wilday

The documentation for the Live data connector might help: http://smartsheet-platform.github.io/odbc-docs/

How come you don't work strictly in smartsheets and forgo the need to use excel?

Monica

Thank you. I will check it out.

Only a few people on my team use Smartsheet regularly. I use it more than anyone and I am slowly convincing others to use it more. I recently added Sights to our licenses and created a few dashboards that were shared with directors of several teams. Now, I am getting requests to create Sights/dashboards for teams I am not on.

The dashboard I am working on now has a lot of data coming from multiple Excel reports from other departments - a lot of hands in the pot. And, a lot of them are not keen on the thought of using another program to store their data. They needed it rather quickly, so I created a Smartsheet and entered the data manually from a printed document I was given. From that sheet, I created reports and metric widgets to pull into the dashboard. It was shared with Senior leadership and their stakeholders and they loved it. The problem is, I am not on that team and I don't have the bandwidth to update their reports manually as needed. It's quite a bit of data. And, entering it manually will increase the likelihood of having errors.

I am scheduled to meet with another team who wants a dashboard and I am sure there will be others. I have the capacity to set them up, but not maintain manually. I was hoping there was a way to create a sheet that pulls in their information as it's updated in Excel. I can teach someone on their team to update rich text items and links, but as mentioned before, entering all of the data manually would be time consuming and increase the probability of errors. Automation would be a lifesaver.

Is it possible?

Mike Wilday

I would think so, but as we do not use Excel, I would have to let someone from SmartSheets, or a user who knows, answer the question.

Monica

Thanks for trying to help. Life would be so much easier if I could convince them to just use Smartsheet. LOL Sights has piqued the interest of some not interested previously. So, there's hope.

J. Craig Williams

Monica,

Yes, it is possible.

It depends on where the data is stored and how/when is it updated.

The Live Connector may be enough. I have used Zapier to update Smartsheet from Excel sheets or Google sheets, so that is also a possibility.

There still may be reasons to keep Excel around. It does some things that Smartsheet can't do - advanced formulas for statistics and financials for example, better charts, pivot tables all spring to mind. The good news is that they really work well together.

Craig

Andrée Starå

Hi Monica,

Smartsheet just released a new add-on called Data Uploader that could be an option.

Please see the attached link/screenshot for more information.

https://www.smartsheet.com/datauploader

I hope this helps you!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

Monica

Thank you! I will check it out.