Make Existing List a Parent of another Existing List

I have two lists that already exist. The first list has items that are a concatenation of employee, role, and project. The second list is just the projects. There is a module that has the following items (in addition to others):

Text format: concatenation of employee, role, and project
List format: concatenation of employee, role, and project
Text format: project name
List format: project name

Both lists are numbered lists. Is there a way to assign the projects as parents of the concatenated list items without assigning the projects list as the parent and then manually moving things around?

Accepted answers

All comments

bdeaton

Are you ultimately wanting the product list to be parent of the list and just wanting to avoid having to manually make all the updates? I’m not sure I follow exactly with what your end goal is.

If so, you could set up an import action from your module to the list to facilitate an automatic update of the appropriate parents.

drushford

I'm not sure what you mean by product list, but the list with the concatenation I'll call the Employee List and the parent list Project List. Currently, the parent of all the members of the Employee List is All Employees. I want to take the values from the source module for Project and assign them as parents to the Employee List while also setting the Project List as the Parent Hierarchy in the list configuration for the Employee List.

So I'm guessing by what you said I should first import the values from the source module for Project and then set the Parent Hierarchy to be Project List? Or am I getting this backwards?

bdeaton

Sorry - meant project list! I work with a product list quite often.

I would recommend setting the parent of your employee list as project and then set up an import action to import all the parents so each employee will roll up to the appropriate parent without having to manually do so.

If this is more than just a one time thing, you can also set this up as recurring. For instance you have a file with the new employees and you import the employee and parent information at the same time to the employee list. Or if the file includes just the concatenation, import it to the employee list, allow the module to determine the project parent, then import that to the employee list - one process, 2 import actions.

DavidSmith

@drushford

I kind of agree with @bdeaton , it does seem more logical to have projects as parents and assign Employees underneath. There are a few other things you mention that I could do with more explanation of. Could you post a bit more context of what you are trying to achieve. What is the process and the upstream / downstream processes and what the data flows are. Screenshots, or attachments would be very helpful

For example?

Why are employees, role and projects concatenated in the first place? - Do employees have multiple roles?
You should try and avoid a text field and a formatted list item. You should be able to calculate/import directly into the formatted field
I don't quite understand "I want to take the values from the source module for Project and assign them as parents to the Employee List while also setting the Project List as the Parent Hierarchy in the list configuration.". Is this not the same. You should be able to achieve the logic with a PARENT(ITEM(Employee List)) line item in a module by Employee list

David

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