This is more of a discussion point and feedback rather than a question. I was experimenting with the Move Row within via a Kanban sprint worksheet. The idea was to move a task into a corresponding History worksheet when “Done” was changed to “Send to History.”
The ability to duplicate a worksheet will probably make this trivial, but currently it is fairly time consuming to set up the History worksheet with the correct columns and data types because copy/paste doesn’t copy the custom colors used for the Select data type. So, I’ll put in another plug for making a “Duplicate Sheet” feature available for copying worksheets.
Here is the automation that I used:
When setting up the automation, a window popped up that allowed me to map the columns to the correct columns in the History worksheet.
I like that I can ignore columns that don’t make sense to transfer to the History worksheet (by leaving the mapping blank). In general I really like the way the mapping works. I experimented with deleting a column from the History worksheet and the automation still worked. Then I could click on “Row” in the automation work flow to update the mapping again if I made changes to the columns. Very smooth.
Note: Formatting of cells (like font color, bold, size, etc) is not preserved when moving rows via automation. This is not a bug in my opinion, because there may be times when you don’t want the formatting to be copied/moved along with the row. However, you might consider adding an option within the automation for allowing formatting to be preserved (if people request that).
'Archive, ‘Send to History’, etc is the use case for which this feature is designed.
We spec-ed, and, deferred a ‘Create Workbook with Similar Schema’ feature within this UI flow - mostly in anticipation of feedback and dialogue such as this one.
The ‘Duplicate Worksheet’ functionality may not automatically work perfectly well for this scenario - well it depends.
Most such Sheets have Autonumber columns - When moved over, one would probably want them mapped to a similarly named Automatic Column - and not have a new Auto Number generated for it.
Another one is Relationships - We do not - at the moment - have one sided relationships. So plain duplication of Relationship and Related Rows may in addition to being unnecessary,
also create a reciprocal column in a Sheet related to the original Worksheet.
So what we may want to do is not ‘Duplicate a Worksheet’, but create a ‘similar Worksheet’ for archival purposes. We may still want to label the feature ‘Duplicate WS’ in this flow to avoid wordiness.
And finally, ‘Duplicate Worksheet’ is indeed a top-level feature on its own.
Ofcourse, open to more feedback on this.
Forwarding formatting to the new Sheet is probably a lower priority thing.
I see what you mean about the relationships with regard to “duplicate a worksheet” - for every case in which I can think of using the feature, what I mostly want is a worksheet that uses the same formatting and data types and formulas. The Archive use case for the move row automation is an example where I want the Select data type to use the same options and colors. In other cases, I’m looking for an easy way to create variations on a main worksheet, like an invoice variant, a different scenario for a financial model, or as a way to use a similar table as a starting point for a new separate table. Even if the new worksheet is not an exact duplicate (due to the table relationships), getting close as possible to being a duplicate can save the user a lot of time.
@Murali_Mohan , you can try out the “Agile Sprint Kanban Board” (already shared with you) to see how I’m experimenting with the move row feature. I’m using a Select data type, but I also experimented with using a checkbox in an “Archive” column so you can just click on the checkbox to move the row. I used “When [column] is updated” for the automation because the checkbox is either checked or unchecked (moving the row back and forth between the tables with an automation set up in each worksheet).
After playing with it for a while, I prefer the use of a separate Archive checkbox column because I don’t want “Send to History” to be a lane in my Kanban board. I may also set up the Backlog this way.
Agree. We are on the same page here.
And, I will check out the Agile Worksheet you have shared.
We have a much more exciting contraption in the Automations roadmap - Buttons. Custom Buttons that you can place on each Row or at Sheet level, from which you could launch Automations/Workflows.
