Simple Solution to the Absence of Pickers in Spreadsheets
What has more #pickers than a banjo conference? A great software system! # 9 on our "Top 10 Dysfunctions of #Spreadsheets” … #NoPickers. 👇
What is a "picker"? Simply put, a #picker is a visual control that guides data entry. Also called chips or value lists. They can be radio buttons or checklists, or more classic pick lists, allowing one or many choices, or overrides. ☑
Many spreadsheets that don’t have #pickers at the outset when the data entry flurry first starts. Perhaps the #workplaceInnovator wasn’t even sure how the columns would be used, and didn’t even have the full list to pick from. 🤔
For example, you may create a simple PO tracking spreadsheet for your department, and you ask your teammates to enter the Vendor. But you don’t yet have a complete list of vendors. What do to? Often, we just start asking for the data, without a control in place.
And downstream, that can cause a fair amount of inconsistent data that can be cumbersome to unravel. Customer A may end up with five different spellings and small differences in their billing address … yet they are the same customer. So which one is the best source of truth? That’ll be a weekend you’ll never get back, ha! 😅
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Yes, of course you can add pickers into your #spreadsheets, and in this video we’ll walk you through a bit of how that functions in #GoogleSheets.
This video also gets into a bit of data modeling. You’ll want to try to unpack, understand and document the relationship between columns. So that when you pick column A (the Vendor ID), then columns B and C (Vendor name and phone number) really just pull through or reference your vendor table. That’ll need a bit of a think.
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What are your options?
1. In a #spreadsheet, try to add pickers from the beginning, even if the lists are relatively small to start. A small “chip” in #GoogleSheets can save you headaches downstream.
Think through as well who can add to that list, whether users can enter items that are not in that list, and whether multiple items are allowed per row (ie. this PO is actually going toward multiple related sales contracts).
2. In a #RapidApp development environment such as #Claris #FileMaker, you’ll be able to properly model out a relational data model. That’s techie speak for how tables connect. ✅
And when you have Vendor info only in the vendor table, and customer info only in the customer table, you’ll find that your keystrokes and opportunities for confusion go way down.
#SingleSourceOfTruth for the win!
