Hello,
I wanted to share a recent solution I was involved in, what was brought to me and what I did to help this group get the data that they need. I work in Healthcare and our org is switching to a new lab software that will require inventory assessment and identify needs for additional hardware.
We have over 700 departments and our executives choose to track and report this within Smartsheet.
They wanted two sheets. One where our IT team could assign themselves and set a rounding date. The other sheet would house a form, a "questionnaire" they would enter for each department, whether it needs equipment or not. It was also decided that they would not use Status columns but wanted to still track this based on burn down rate and projection to completion.
I always used a Status column, however this project challenged me to rethink that process and look at other variables that can define: Not Started, In Progress, Complete. I also needed to validate that when a questionnaire was entered, we could close out that department.
Not Started - Any entry where date field was blank.
In Progress - Any entry with a present and/or future date field.
Complete - Any entry that had a helper column that matched with the questionnaire sheet for the matching department name.
This process worked for a while until executive changes were made and I had to redefine status as changes were made to have accurate data on our dashboard. Safe to say I learned a lot from this.
To add some clarifications, I was not the Project Manager or Owner for any of this. I was brought in because of my Smartsheet knowledge and it was interesting to have a consultant perspective. Normally I own projects like this for my areas and I tend to focus more on automations and add a layer between source sheet and those inputting information. Sometimes 50 hands in one sheet is not the most ideal.
I would love any feedback or has someone experienced something similar where you are brought on an existing Smartsheet solutions but you are asked to make it work vs change/fix.
