How to create unique identifier if you have multiple forms that should fill on the same line?

ChaunyT

I am attempting to attach 3 forms to a workflow.

One form is an intake form done by an internal team. The second and third forms are done by to different third parties. Ideally, all of the forms would fill in on the same line in my smartsheet.

I know an unique identifier would be ideal to connect these, but the reference ID column does not work within the forms. Is there a way to connect the three forms with an identifier that does not need to be manually created? Or is there some other thing I'm missing that would allow me to show that all 3 forms are connected, and thus need to be in the same line?

Ella

@ChaunyT If you have 3 different forms in a sheet, each form submission will create 3 different rows. This is not something that you can manipulate to my knowledge or were you asking about having 3 separate sheets and connecting the form submissions?

ChaunyT

@Ella Honestly either would work. I need one sheet to house all the data, but if there's a way I can have the final answers of each form connected to master sheet within the same row later, that's also fine with me. Do you think I can only achieve that with 3 separate sheets?

Dale Murphy

@ChaunyT How do you know the three are connected? As @Ella said, each form submission creates a unique row.

Usually, if I need more information about a form submission, I have a workflow that sends out an Update Request to whoever is flagged on the first submission. That Update Request isn't as pretty or functional as a form can be, but it does result in (more) information being written to the same row.

Perhaps consider the approach of workflows that help build the full row of information instead of multiple forms that will need to be stitched together somehow.

dm

Ella

@ChaunyT I agree with @Dale Murphy on utilizing update requests. It is much easier to do UR than trying to figure out how to connect different sheets which would require datameshes creation and also you would still have to manually support the unique identifier so that the sheets can be connected.