Excel Regional Edits

[chrischrischris]

Built in excel track changes is a feature that does not exist. Because of that we have to come up with a custom solution that will enable authors to see the differences between langstore and the regional file and select the different changes.

Proposal

• The excel rollout tool will be able to compare any sheets with the same name in the regional & langstore files.
  • If a new sheet is added in langstore that is not in regional, that sheet will be copied as is to the regional sheet.
  • When doing the compare of sheets with the same name, the user will have the option to skip that sheet if needed.
• To setup rollout options for the file, a helix-rollout sheet can be added to the workbook. It will have the following options (Format TBD):
  • Sheets to ignore
  • Columns to ignore (defined per sheet) - This would be used for DNT
  • Possibly also allow for a global sheet in config that specifies this.
• Diffing will be done via a Sidekick button that will bring up a custom interface that allows the author to select Regional or Langstore edit.
  • TBD: The interface design will need to be mocked up and approved
• Once the author has completed the selections, the the sheets in the regional file will be updated with the merged data

Open Questions / TBD

• Rollout config sheet name and format
• Interface design in sidekick tool
• Probably will need a mechanism to assign an id to every row. This means that the ids would have to be added to every sheet when rollout happens.
  • Is there some other mechanism that would work without modifying the sheets

Notes

• The diffing algorithm has to be done on the JSON data so the sheet will need to be previewed.

LOE Estimate

Feature	Time
JSON Diffing Algorithm	1-2 weeks
Sidekick Interface	3-7 weeks
Excel sheet manipulation	1-2 weeks

Jira Ticket MWPW-147530

[vhargrave]

Sounds good to me. Two things that I'd call out are :

1. Right before merging you'll probably want to have the tool preview both the regional & langstore excel files to ensure you have the latest data in your JSON and on that topic
2. with this solution it will only be possible to translate sheets that are publicly available. I don't think it's a problem for us, but it's still good to know.