Here we are. After learning the basics of the Excel plugin, you may wonder how to achieve some more advanced actions. This page will give you some ideas to go further with your knowledge of the plugin.

Filtering/hiding and sorting

Despite the fact that you can only get sheets containing predefined data from projects or lists, filtering and sorting will allow you to get a quick view of all the relevant data for all your analysis.

It behaves exactly the same as in a classical Excel sheet. Click on the arrow next to a column title, for instance, "category". Sort and filter it the way you want.

You can also hide columns by selecting them and clicking on "hide".

Adding multiple users or documents to a point/form

For some columns (like “user in charge”, documents, …) you will see that cells can contain multiple values. But, you have only access to a single dropdown. To modify these cells and, for example, link multiple users to a point, just get into the cell formula editor, hold alt and press enter to input a new line. Then, you will be able to add more data. You can also copy content from other cells.

LB Aproplan has the powerful ability to make comments at any time, on all the remarks that you see on the field.

To make comments in the Excel plugin, just type anything you want in the comments cell and then, upload. All the content will not be overridden. Your comment will just be added next to all others.

Formulas and macros

The sheets produced by the plugin completely support any kind of formulas and macros. It is not recommended to automatically update all LB Aproplan data using macros, because it could harm the integrity of the content you have in LB Aproplan. But, you can still use them to get insights from it (planning, dashboard, ...).

Make a planning

One good usage of the data produced by the plugin is, for example, to make an easy-to-use project planning. Just adjust the dates (creation, due date, ...), and make a planning chart that reflects the way you work.

As you can see, there is already a bootstrap of a sample planning chart available at the right of all the information you have in your sheet. Adjust its style, colour, formulas, and get the planning you want.

Make a dashboard

As your LB Aproplan data is now in Excel, you can use it to make dashboards as well. Just create all your pivots, charts and custom formulas to automatically monitor your projects.

Sometimes, when you will upload your sheet, you may see some error messages popping. That is completely normal! In this case, LB Aproplan cannot guarantee that the data you input in the sheet is:

That is why you will sometimes have to face some error messages.

Let's see a simple example >>

Example 1

On the message below, you can see that there was an error on line 5.

It states that the category does not exist. This is because someone changed the category of the point without updating the associated subcategory. As a consequent, it is unable to push this data in LB Aproplan.

Example 2

Another error message can happen when LB Aproplan is not able to find a unique entity for a given name. For instance, there, someone tried to link a point to a document called "Plan_LetsBuild"; but, as they are many documents with the same name, the plugin refused to push it to prevent linking it to the wrong one.

How to solve them?

After you tried to push those data, the plugin will indicate that some errors occurred during the upload.

Depending on the number of errors (smaller or greater than 5), the plugin will inform you that it either:

This means that if you download your sheet again, all the non-pushed data will be overridden with the correct information from LB Aproplan.

If this is not what you want, you can either:

Of course, if you do not understand one message, or if you need assistance on how to fix them, just reach our customer support at support@letsbuild.com or via the green help button available everywhere in the app.

There are many ways to use the Excel Plugin. Depending on the way you work and the actions you would like to achieve, you can use the plugin in different ways to make you more productive in the environment you like.

This section will gather some successful use cases from our clients that are already using it. If you find something else that is interesting to share, feel free to contact us and make living in the LB Aproplan community.

Import historical data

In order to leverage all the possibilities of the plugin (dashboarding, planning, project management). You need, of course, to have some data into LB Aproplan to feed the spreadsheets.

If you are starting to use LB Aproplan, you may not have such data to start working with.

LB Aproplan Excel Plugin can help you, after setting up your project to import all historical data you have from previous existing systems, whether they are another CRM, spreadsheets, paper documents, or anything else.

Just translate everything into a plugin sheet and upload everything to LB Aproplan.

Working with list patterns

Another use case of the plugin is the "list pattern". Depending on the sector you work in, and the kind of projects you make, you may have some kind of recurring pattern in your LB Aproplan data.

Let's imagine that you work for a company building houses. Whatever house you build, the process is always the same. First, you inspect the field, then, you make action, and finally, you check that everything is OK.

All of those major actions can be predefined and copied from another project directly to the new one using the plugin. This will save you a lot of time and make your processes cleaner, easier, and more scalable.

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