Managing participants

LyndaRousseau · 08/05/24

Hi !

We want to collect information about participants to a course. The thing is that each direction will propose courses that would fit their employees. And for each course, they will list the employees who would be attending.

So first, I though of using a form, but they would have to fill it up for every employee (participant) for every course he will attend.

Then I tough that I could create a sheet for every direction and they could fill one line per employee/per course and I could automate to copy in my master sheet.

Then I though that maybe there's a way to fill a form once for a course, select all the participants in a list and then, in the master sheet, brake down this form in as many participants there is. Is it possible ??

Is there another way ?

Thanks A LOT !!!

Rich Coles · 08/06/24

Hi @LyndaRousseau - this is probably worth a quick conversation to understand better what you are trying to achieve, what information you want to capture and what the steps are in your process eg (1) management provide list of people and proposed courses, then (2) participants sign up and then (3) provide feedback after attending.

For a solution like this, I would use multiple sheets that I connect so that the list of proposed attendees shares data with a sheet with a form where attendees provide information. Or I would use Dynamic View where you can host information in one sheet.

Paul Newcome · 08/06/24

@LyndaRousseau There is an option for users to select multiple options (people) within a single form field which then in turn gets parsed out so that every option is its own row on another sheet. If this sounds like what you are looking for, feel free to take a look at the below thread:

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/119380/split-multiple-selections-in-single-form-into-individual-rows-core-product

LyndaRousseau · 08/06/24

Thank you @Rich Coles and @Paul Newcome for your quick answers !!

A precision: I want to do a form with one field being multiple choices - List of contacts. One form= One course.

So I want to create one line per contact per course. I'm not using OPTION columns. I want to spread the multiple choices in as many entries (lines).

Can I apply part or all of your solution ? Or any other idea ?

Tx !!

Rich Coles · 08/06/24

Hi @LyndaRousseau - now I have a better understanding as to what you want to do, I'd probably approach this a different way, which is much less complicated, yet I believe achieves what you are looking to do efficiently…

Instead of using a form, you could create a sheet for each department with all the employees listed (you'd have to have them listed anyway for a form), and then a check-box for the manager to select if they are attending that course.

In the sheet summary, create a field for Course and Date, then in the sheet you can create column formulas in the respective columns using these formulas =Course# and =Date#.

Then you can create an automation to copy each row that is checked to your master sheet and it will have the right information in.

Note for the department column I have used this column formula: =IF(Employee@row <> "", "Marketing")

This solution is very scalable as once you have created one sheet with the automation, you can replicate it for all the different departments and share the specific sheet with each department head. You can then re-use the sheet for different courses by changing the name of the course - or save a new sheet. Just one thing to check - if you save as new, check the copy row is connected to the correct sheet. You might have to re-set it when you save as new.

Paul Newcome · 08/06/24

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/447981#Comment_447981

The "Options" would be the contacts in your case. This solution would still apply, but instead of a multi-select dropdown it sounds like you are using a multi-select contact.

My first comment in that thread provides a formula for grabbing from a multi-select dropdown. The only difference between that and a multi-select contact type column would be the delimiter. That formula in the first comment only needs to have that updated.

Change all instances of

CHAR(10)

to

", "

(comma space)

LyndaRousseau · 08/08/24

@Rich Coles @Paul Newcome

Thanks a lot to both of you !! I'll give a try to all this ! :)

Rich Coles · 08/13/24

Hi Lynda - how did you get on? Have you managed to implement a solution that works? The joy with Smartsheet is there are always many different ways to approach a solution!

LyndaRousseau · 08/13/24

…As there are many different ways to EXPLAIN the need. Talking with my client, I figured out that it's not exactly what they want to do now. But I'm sure that I'll need this sooner or later, for sure !!

Thanks a lot Rich for the follow up ! :)

Have great day !! :)

Managing participants

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