Best Of

Hi Community,

Hot off the press, I am excited to announce a new, highly requested, chart type is now available in dashboards: Scatter charts! A fan favorite originally introduced in Smartsheet labs, we are happy to finally make this available in the main Smartsheet app.

In addition, this update will introduce a new option for the x-axis called “numeric axis”, an option to change the x-axis to display number-based data points accurately on the axis instead of evenly distributing the data points.

You will be able to create a scatter chart from the data in your sheets and reports. To get started, create a chart widget or edit an existing widget, select “Add Data”, and choose the sheet or report you’d like to use as the source for your chart.

Note: At this time “numeric axis” is only available on scatter charts.

If you'd like to learn more, check out our help content on charting in dashboards.

As always, let us know what you think through the Product Feedback form (available from the menu here in Community), and thank you to everyone who submits feedback and requests for dashboards — we appreciate everything you send us!

-Brendan

Hi Community, 

In April, we introduced the new Smartsheet experience. While we’ve heard you love the addition of home and updated navigation, we also heard from you that the update takes up more space in sheets and reports, which was especially noticeable on small screens like a laptop. We heard you, and today the product team is happy to deliver an improved full-screen mode to help you regain screen real estate, when you need it.  

On the right side of the toolbar, you’ll notice a new full-screen button. This replaced the previous chevron that collapsed the toolbar. 

After clicking the button, you’ll enter our improved full-screen mode, which now includes the feature bar on the right hand side. In full screen mode, navigation options are hidden (navigation bar and search bar) to give you even more working area.

Bonus tip! Use our new Hotkeys to enter and exit full screen view quickly

• Mac: Control + Shift + F 
• PC: Ctrl + F1

Why did we make this change?

Based on your feedback, we moved the full-screen button from the bottom left to a more prominent location at the top of the sheet to make it easier to find and use. This button will always be visible in the toolbar for quick access, no matter what size screen you are on.

We want to thank you again for taking the time to provide feedback, as it helps us understand what’s most important to you. We’ll continue to post in the Community as we make updates to spacing in sheets and reports, so stay tuned! And as always, if you have suggestions on how we can continue to improve, fill out an Enhancement Request for our product team to review. 

Cheers,

Morgan

Hi Community,

We just enabled a forms enhancement that many of you have requested: field validation.

You can now add real-time validation to Text/Number fields to help collect error-free numbers, percentages, email addresses, and phone numbers. Email validation is also available for Contact fields. 

We think this will be a particularly big time saver for you if you currently:

• Manually review form submissions in your sheet for errors
• Use formulas in your sheet to check for invalid responses
• Have automated workflows that require consistent, error-free form submissions in order to be triggered at the right moments

Our form validation is extremely easy to set up.

While viewing your form in the form builder, click on a Text/Number or Contact field to open the Field Settings panel. Depending on the type of field you clicked on, you’ll have one or more validation options. Simply select the one you want to apply to the field. For phone numbers, you can also select the default country. Once you save your form, the validation you added will immediately start working.

When someone fills in a field with validation enabled, here’s what their experience will be:

• If their entry is valid, they won’t notice the validation at all.
• If they try to enter an invalid character (such as a non-numeric character in a number-validated field), they simply will not be allowed to do so.
• If their entry does not match a required character pattern (such as too many or too few phone number digits for the selected country) and they move the cursor’s focus to somewhere else on the form, the form will display an error message below the validated field. It is not possible to submit a form with validation errors.

As a best practice, you might want to add help text to validated fields (e.g., “Numbers only”). The help text option is also found in the Field Settings panel.

Here’s the form validation help article if you want to review all the details.

We already have a lot of ideas for how to further enhance validation in the future so this is really just the beginning! Let us know what you think and what else you’d like to see. Thanks as always to everyone who submits feedback and requests for forms — we appreciate everything you send us.

-Caroline