Control Center: Archive projects with archiving workflows

Archiving workflows in Control Center let you prevent older projects from cluttering up Browse, remove users who no longer need access, and/or lock down data for auditing purposes. 

Set up an archiving workflow and manage projects you no longer need firsthand.

Who can use this?

Plans:

  • Business
  • Enterprise
  • Advanced Work Management

You must be a Program Lead to set up rules for project archiving and be the Owner or Admin of the archive workspace.

With project archiving, you can configure workflows to archive completed projects. Archive settings include:

  • Moving project items, intake sheet rows, and summary sheet rows to a new location
  • Limiting access to ensure data preservation
  • Disabling automated workflows within project sheets

If you’re part of the user model and work with Program reports, you can set the scope to include Active or Archived projects.

Before you begin

If you want to move projects or project intake/summary sheet rows as part of an archive, you can set up the following items in Smartsheet before creating your archive workflow. These are all optional:

  • Archive intake sheet
  • Archive summary sheet
  • Archive workspace

Set up archiving workflows

  1. Open the program where you want to set up the archiving workflow.
  2. Select Manage program and then navigate to the Archiving tab.
  3. Select the New Archive button from the top right corner.
  4. Use the Name field to name your workflow.
  5. Use the Select Blueprint dropdown to select a blueprint.
  6. Select Next.
Select Archiving tab

To see the log of an existing archiving workflow, select the three-dot menu > Show logs > See a full history

Project filters and actions

In the Project Filters & Actions page, you can add filters to identify projects and select which actions to perform.

Project Filters and Actions page

 

Project Filters

  1. Select Summary Sheet. Use this dropdown to select which summary sheet contains the value you want to use to trigger the archiving.
  2. Projects where all of the following are true.
  • Use the Select Profile Data dropdown to determine which profile data fields trigger the archiving.
  • Choose between Is equal to and Contains from the Select condition dropdown to determine the condition of the profile data value.
  • Enter a value to use for the archiving in the Enter criteria field.

Confirm the value in your summary sheet before typing it in the criteria field.

Project Filters page

Project Archive Actions

After defining the filtering, you need to select the Project Archive Actions.

  1. Location. Use the dropdown to define if you want to move archived projects to another workspace. The option is set to Do not move by default. You can select the Move to… option to select an existing workspace. Use the search bar to find the workspace you want.

Before creating an archive workflow in Control Center, you must create the archive workspace in Smartsheet.

Moving the project folder to a different workspace changes which Smartsheet users are shared to that project, as well as how they navigate to it.

  1. The checkboxes allow you to deactivate additional functionality.
  • Remove all project-level sharing. Select this option to remove access from those shared to individual items. Once you’ve archived the projects, only users shared to the workspace can access them.
  • Disable Alerts & Actions. Select this option to disable any automated workflows in the sheets in the archived project.
  • Disable Published Sheets, Dashboards, Reports. Select this option to unpublish any items from the archived projects.
  • Freeze inbound cell-links and formulas. Use this option to prevent cell links and formulas from updating after you’ve archived the project, even if the individual sheets have updates.  

5. Update Project Profile Data. Use this option to update the value of a profile data field when archiving a project.

  • Select profile data. Use the dropdown to select the profile data field you want to update after archiving.

  • Enter value. Use the field to enter the value you’d like it to change to.

For example, if you select Project Stage as the profile data field and enter Archived as the value, that field will update to Archived after you archive the project.

Use + Add Profile Data to update multiple data fields.

Project Archive Actions

Intake and summary sheet actions

On the Intake and Summary Sheet Actions page, you can select what action to perform on selected rows connected to projects in the intake and summary sheets.

In addition to moving the entire project folder to a new workspace, you can select to move the project summary row away from the active intake and summary sheets and into the archive intake and summary sheets.

The Intake Sheet Action and Summary Sheet Action dropdowns give you the following options:

  • Do not move. Nothing happens when you archive the project.
  • Move to… Select a specific sheet where you want the projects archived.

If you want to have an archive sheet, you need to create it in Smartsheet first.
 

  • Delete. Remove the row from the sheet once you’ve archived the project.
  • Freeze and Lock. Keep rows in the sheet, but set them to freeze and lock as soon as you archive them.
Intake and Summary Sheet Actions

Select Create when you’re ready to create your new archive workflow.

Run the archive workflow

The Perform Archiving page shows the projects ready to be archived, depending on the profile data value you selected in the first screen when setting up the workflow.

By default, the system selects all the projects that contain that value, but there’s a checkbox on the left, so if there are any you don’t want to archive yet, you can deselect them.

To run your new archive workflow:

  1. Open the program.
  2. Select Manage Program.
  3. Select the Archiving tab.
  4. Select the name of the workflow.
  5. Confirm the actions and the filters.
  6. Select the Perform Archiving button.