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How to deploy a list
How to deploy a list

Learn about how to create a parent list framework, and deploy a child list to each project

Sam avatar
Written by Sam
Updated over a week ago

The list deployment features in Dashpivot allow you to use different lists on the same template across your projects.

This comes in handy when you have a standard company template eg. Site diary, and are using dropdown lists for people, subcontractors and cost codes, but these lists vary from project to project.

List deployment allows you to use the same list framework across all projects, but customise what list items appear in that list on each project.

This way, your teams can use the same template on every project, but use project-specific values

Note: list deployment can only be used in relation to:

How it works in practice:

  1. Create a list in your List Library. This will be your 'parent' list.

  2. Create a Template in your Template Library, which includes a category field or table field containing list cell/column

  3. Link the list you created in step 1

  4. Save the template, and deploy the template to your project(s)

  5. Go back to your List Library, select the list you created in Step 1, and click 'Manage Deployment'

  6. Select the projects which will need to use project-specific list items and click save changes. This will create a 'child' list in the project's list section

  7. Now pick a project you deployed a child list to. Go to the list section, and you'll see the child list has been deployed (but is empty).

  8. Click on the list and start adding the project-specific list items you'll be using on this project. You can either create new list items (these will be added to the parent list), or choose from items which already exist in the parent list.

Please note that if you do not populate your child list, the template dropdown list will show up blank. So it is important to inform the appropriate project controller (or organisation controller) to populate the list if you aren't doing this yourself.

How to auto-deploy a child list

To save time, you can automate the deployment process for each project by just checking the 'Auto-deploy' option from inside the template builder.

Common use cases

When we designed this feature set, the key use cases we had in mind were lists of:

  • People

  • Subcontractors

  • Cost codes

  • Plant & Equipment

  • Location

A few final notes

  • List items can be removed from a child list, but only be deleted in the parent list (in your List Library). Which means only organisation controllers have the permission to delete list items.

  • If you have multiple templates deployed, and each is linked to a single list, if the list is deployed, all the templates will use the 'child' list. For example, if you have a list of people deployed to a project, any templates which refer to the list of people will lookup the names of people stored in the 'child' list.

  • It is possible to use project-specific 'child' lists on one project, and use the 'parent' list on others. By default, projects which do not have the linked list deployed, will simply refer to the parent list.

  • It is possible for the 'child' lists on multiple projects to use the same unique list item. This is important for data quality, and ensuring your analytics dashboards are accurate.

  • The list properties set in the parent list will be the same in the child list. List property columns cannot be added at project level, and the property values cannot be populated and modified. Please note that in future modifying list properties at a project level will be possible, and in doing so, you will update that list item's property across the board.

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