Hi all. First time with Glide. I am a freelance Quantity Surveyor in UK looking to use existing available historic project cost data to enable future project cost estimate forecasting.
All works as it should within excel, I need help on how to use Glide tools to put the gui over the top. Anyone have any suggestions as to: 1. Are there any built templates that could lend themselves to this type of data input/output? 2. If not what recommendations might help the Glide assembly from scratch?
Thanks in advance. Martin
Hey Martin, welcome to Glide.
As for the templates they all use glide table, so if u needed something for your excel files u wouldnt find aomething in the template gallery, but u can always start from scratch and we have a wonderful community will assist u in every step.
And btw the glide free - explorer - maker plan doesnt support syncing with Excel, but u can import data feom an Excel/CSV.
Happy to see you hear and excited to see what you build.
Is there a reason it must be in Excel? Can you explain more about your Excel calculations to see if it can be replicated solely with Glide Tables?
No, none whatsoever. I use excel daily that’s all. Problem?
The calculations are not too complicated, certainly the sheets could be ported elsewhere without a problem.
What will be the benefit porting to Glide sheets?
Will I be able to use Glide sheets data and then Glide as a gui overlay to use the data calculations already in place to formulate further forecast costs??
Not really a problem, but it’s usually best to avoid using external data sources where you can. It keeps things simpler, and you don’t have to be concerned about data sync issues.
Although, unless you’ll be using a paid Glide plan, then using an external data source won’t even be an option.
I doubt that you’ll find a suitable pre-built template for this use case, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to build out from scratch.
Do you have any ideas or mockups of what your UI should look like?
How is your data laid out in Excel, and how complex are your formulas?
Can you share some details, and perhaps some screen shots?
If you’re totally new to Glide, my advice would be to create a new App, import your Excel data, and just start experimenting with it.
There are plenty of learning/help resources to help you get going. Apart from the Community here (which is great), the Glide Docs are a good reference, and the Glide University will take you all the way from beginner to expert.
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Hi Darren, thanks for the observations.
As a QS, I am not really a good UI designer!
Here are a couple of Cost Output screenshots of what is output in excel. All the data is currently fictional, simply to ensure calculation validity.
These are the two key output sheets that will be essential in the UI. One will show all the assembled historical data to a cost per project total, adjustable simply to show each individual project cost.
The second will then take this data and with appropriate manual and automated adjustment forecast cost for future known project.
Hope that makes sense!
Additionally, I intend to display data from completed previous projects in a way similar to the Project Management template.
Okay. Both of those screen shots look like they are aggregating data from other sheets.
What you will want to do is import your raw data into Glide, build out the same aggregation logic within the Glide Data editor, and then expose that via the Glide UI.There will be a bit of a learning curve, but I would say it’s totally doable.
A few topics you might want to read up on, or have handy to refer to:
As I said earlier, my advice is to just jump in and get your feet wet. You’ll probably get stuck before too long, but that’s what the community is here for.
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Darren, thank you. Will review articles before uploading data.
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You will also want to check the University.
