How to import an existing bid sheet to create Shots and Tasks

Many of you bid your projects in a spreadsheet, with Shots as the rows and departments as the columns. You then add the number of man days per department in each cell. If you already have a spreadsheet like this, then you can import it to Flow Production Tracking to create both your Shots and your Tasks in one go. This tutorial shows you how to format your spreadsheet in a way that Flow Production Tracking understands.

Creating a Flow Production Tracking page for importing and exporting Shots and bids

If you just want to import your data and don’t want to learn the nuts and bolts of how Flow Production Tracking handles Shots and Tasks on one page, you can skip the tutorial and use our importer.

Let’s look at an example spreadsheet. If your spreadsheet looks like this, great!

If not, try to format yours to match. Some things to notice:
1. Each row is one Shot.
2. Each column is one department.
3. Bids are given in numbers.
Let’s look at your Shots landing page in List View.
To customize your page’s layout, click the "+ column" button on the far right of the header columns, and then click “Manage Columns...” and deselect all but the “Shot Code” field. Click “Apply.”
Click the Pipeline menu on the toolbar to make sure all the departments in your spreadsheet are listed here. If they’re not, select Manage Pipeline to add or rename the Shot Pipeline Steps. Choose apply when you’re done.
Using the same Pipeline menu, click on the departments you've bid against to load them on the page.
Expand one of the Pipeline Steps by clicking the double arrows in the column header and then hide every field except for “Bid” and “Duration.” You can do this by right-clicking the “Status” column header, hovering over “Insert Columns”, and then choosing “Configure Columns...”.
Now right-click the Pipeline Step header and choose “Update all Steps to Match This Layout”.
Here’s what you should end up with:
You’re going to use this as your template for importing new Shots and Tasks, so first save a copy of this page by going to the Page Settings menu at the top right of the page and choosing “Save As...”. Call it “Bid Importer”, leave the Project field blank, and choose “Create Page.”
On the page you just created, click the gear button on the toolbar and choose “Export Shots”. This will download a “.csv” file that you can use as a template for your importing Shots and Tasks.

Importing Shots and Tasks with bid information

Open the template spreadsheet you generated previously (you can download our sample template below). Open your own bid sheet too if you have one.
Select and copy the Shots from your spreadsheet and paste them under the “Shot Code” column in the template.
Select and copy the bids from the first department in your spreadsheet and paste them under the “Bid” column, which should be under the Flow Production Tracking Pipeline Step name. Do the same to the “Duration” field. The reason you want both is so your Tasks also have a “Duration,” which will make scheduling easier.
Follow Step 3 for each of the departments in your spreadsheet until you have something that looks like this:
Copy everything in the template to the clipboard (all rows and columns as they appear).
Back in Flow Production Tracking, click the “More” button in the toolbar and choose “Import Shots.”
Paste your data into the text box and click continue.
Flow Production Tracking should recognize all of your columns, so click “Continue.”
We’re creating, not updating Shots, so don’t check any boxes here and click "Continue."
The preview page will tell you that you’re creating both Shots and Tasks. Correct any errors that appear on the page and then click continue to create your Shots and Tasks.
That’s it! Click “Go back to the page where you started” to see the Shots and Tasks you just created.

If you need to update Tasks, you can add the bid and time log to a Task on the schedule page.

sample_bid_importer.xls