Adding columns to cross sync table

1

Hi everyone,

I’m new to Coda and I’m trying to build a Project Managment system for my architecture firm.My goal would be to create individual Docs for main elements that make a our workflow, such as:

  • Staff

    • Roles

    • Costs

  • Clients

  • Contacts

  • Projects

    • Projects Phases

    • Project Tasks

  • Fee Proposals

Now, I reached a point where I set up those docs and created cross sync tables from one another but I’m now trying to achieve something I get frustrated over and over.

In my “Fee Proposals” Doc, I have a table named “Calculate Budget” to calculate the resources and time needed to generate the fee proposals to our Clients.

Inside this document I cross synced the “Active Projects” table from the source “Projects” Doc and now I would like to insert in it a lookup column from the “Calculate Budget” to display the total fee for the project.

Is there a way to sync back this lookup column to the source “Projects” doc?

The goal would be to have that information available in the source table as well.

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Thank you

2

Hi Diego,

Welcome to the community!

Just some generic feedback, and I don’t know how long you have been using Coda:

I always strongly recommend to people that they build a few docs in Coda, and try out a few approaches before they start out with their magnum opus. There are quite a few nuances to the decisions around

  • table creation, (generally I find that people create too many tables)
  • doc creation, (generally I find that people create too many docs)
  • whether to use cross doc or sync tables, etc, etc.
  • once you have split a table, or a doc, you introduce a “layer of difficulty” in accessing the data. And yes, often times it makes absolute sense to split things, e.g. customers and invoices. Other times, it is more nuanced, for example considering to keep business partners in a single table, with indicators for staff, contacts, vendors, customers. Sometimes a business partner fulfills different roles, sometimes they fulfill different roles over time.

These decisions are influenced, among others, by data volume and authorisation requirements.

I generally start out with a single doc, and build a protype, splitting into docs as needed.

It took me about a year to a) get rid of my Excell and Access ways of thinking, and b) understand the Coda way of thinking.

But, it’s just a ramble,
Rambling Pete

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3

Hi Piet,

Thanks for the response.
You are right, I forgot to mention that we are exploring the idea of moving some of the company’s data from Google Sheets to Coda, but for now I’m just experimenting with it in order to understand what could be the best workflow to use.
I used Coda for some personal data collection, notes and tasks in the last year, and that’s the reason why I proposed to adopt it in my studio as well.

As you suggested, I restarted from scratch by building a single Doc with all the tables I need, and I will eventually understand if and when I will need to split into different docs for role/privacy needs.

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