Coffee Roulette

[craigja]

Hi,

I have a number of teams in my department who take part in a coffee roulette - basically you get randomly paired with somebody else, grab a coffee and have a chat.  Im looking to somehow automate the election of the coffee buddy.....

There is only 1 rule - you cant have coffee with somebody in your team.  Any ideas how I can automate this?  I have a small excel spreadsheet with about 60 names and half a dozen or so team names.  Im thinking it would need to be a macro but I've never done one before!

[joshuaburkhow]

I want to build this for you.... but @ChristineB this so should be a weekly challenge! 

@craigja I don't want to spoil the answer so I am going to send you via message (hopefully others do the same 😉 )

[joshuaburkhow]

Oh forgot to ask, can you provide the data? 

[craigja]

I cant provide the data as such - cant put up the names of all the actual team members but I have mocked up some random names and teams to use to create a workflow

[ChristineB]

@joshuaburkhow @craigja keep me posted!  I'd love to see what you come up with and how we might be able to share this as a Weekly Challenge!  

[craigja]

Ideally what I would also like is the ability to somehow track who you have had coffee with before so you dont get paired with the same person.....  Im thinking this would be another input of previous coffee pairings (say 1 file, that we keep appending to) that when running it would look to see the pairing had ever happened before and if it had, would regenerate that pair.

[joshuaburkhow]

Perfect got it. Let me take a stab at it and get something back to you later today. 

[afv2688]

Hello @craigja,

Here's a way to do it.

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

Regards

[afv2688]

Hello @craigja ,

It adds now a list with already paired people. It also adds a random seed to even make it more random? Dunno at this point lol

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

Regards

[craigja]

Hi,

The latest version never seems to complete, just keeps ticking up the iterations with 2 records remaining, could it be that the 2 remaining have already been paired and its just going round in a circle, trying to pair them with themselves?  I suppose what you want to do at that point would be to restart the whole process or something...

Craig