Template Auto Linking for New Projects

Paul Newcome

That's what I was afraid of. Unfortunately charting sub-groupings doesn't quite work. How many roles do you have and how many portfolios do you have? Will either of those numbers change?

Sarah123

The numbers shouldn't typically change (but there could be more added in the future). I was hoping there was an easy way of setting up an auto linking of all cells from a summary sheet I pull from the project plan without having to have it manually pulled each time a project is created.

Paul Newcome

If you have access to Control Center you can set it up to provision new projects through there and have the links automatically created on a Summary Sheet. Otherwise you're unfortunately stuck with manual.

However...

You can "bulk cell link" if you structure correctly. If you highlight a group of cells that is 4 columns wide and 2 rows tall, you can right click and go through the same way you would cell link and then select a group of cells 4 columns wide and 2 rows tall from the source sheet and have all of the cells linked in one step.

I personally have leveraged this 2 different ways.

I will go ahead and select a group of cells in the target sheet to match the source and create my links. Then you can click and drag the border of the cell on your target sheet to move the linked cell to the appropriate location.

or

If I am linking vertical data in the source sheet to horizontal data in the target sheet, I will create some hidden helper columns to the far right of the source sheet and use cell references to pull the data from the vertical layout to the horizontal layout right there in the source sheet (in the same order as what I have in my target sheet). Then I can cell link across that top row in bulk.

Sarah123

Thanks! I have it so that we select the full sheet with the info so the linking is quicker. We will just continue with the manual process until an option is created for this in the future.

Sarah123

@Paul Newcome question - do you know if Data Mesh would be useful? Can I setup data mesh in my template sheets and have it carry over when projects are created from the templates? Or will I have create a new data mesh for each project?

Thanks!

Paul Newcome

I am fairly certain you would need to create a new datamesh each time a new project is created because the datamesh is a separate "app".

Sarah123

Thanks! I thought so but wasn't exactly sure.

Paul Newcome

Happy to help. 👍️