Stop Losing Your Children in Pipelines and To Do Lists

If you've used hierarchy (a.k.a. 'Indent/Outdent') in Smartsheet, you may have noticed a new 'make life easier' feature that we introduced last Wednesday. It's the CHILDREN function and it enables you to reference rows that are 'direct descendants' (one level removed) of a parent row. 

How does it make life easier? Rather than having to establish cell range or selected set references to total, average, or count values (as you would have to do in Excel or Google Spreadsheets) you can now simply enter CHILDREN() into a cell along with your desired operator (SUM, AVG, COUNT, etc).

Here are two examples of how you could apply it to your Smartsheets:

Example 1: Totaling the values in an sales opportunity pipeline.  Enter =SUM(CHILDREN()) into the Forecast Amount cell in the parent row (the one showing $577,000). The direct descendants are the roll-up values in the green, yellow, and gray rows.  If you add another category that is one level removed from Total Pipeline Value, it too would automatically roll into the total.

Example 2: Dynamically displaying opportunity counts by category.  By combining text with COUNT(CHILDREN()) you can easily see how many items you have by category.  As you move, insert, or delete rows in and out of cateogries, counts automatically adjust. Very handy.

To see live examples of the CHILDREN function in action, check out the To Do List, Sales Opportunity Pipeline with Counts, or Formula Samples templates in Home Tab > Template Gallery.

Enjoy the power and convenience of this new function and let us know about creative ways you're applying it to your sheets.

-Mark