Smartsheet Backup and Recovery

Moxam

We would like Smartsheet to provide a mechanism to do a full backup and restore of related files. While a step in the right direction is the ability to restore to a previous version of a sheet, we find that in an integrated environment, this would not be sufficient:

We have a single worksheet that drives multiple reports and dashboards.

We have also created many dynamic views that are embedded in dashboards.

Finally we have deployed these to users through Workapps.

In the event of a problem in the source sheet, receiving an excel backup (or saving the sheet with a new name at a point in time) is not a sufficient backup, as the integration to reports, dashboards, dynamic views, and work apps would all need to be reconnected.

We hope Smartsheet can create backups of the environment and allow users to select which items to recover from a point in time backup (e.g. Daily). Ideally users could select which items to restore to ensure integration and links from that point in time were respected (at least within a given workspace).

Thanks for considering this request.

Steve Sanders_NCSU

Please make the undo button active. Or at the very least, make it possible to restore your sheet to a previous version.

MelissaSan

Agreed! This would be huge and is a major shortcoming. Our sheets use automations, drive reports, dashboards, work apps etc.

Only offering to zip the sheets is not a robust enough back up.

Melaniejmorrison

Autosave should be a seamless user experience like it is with Google, instead of users having to manually turn it on and choose how often changes are saved. It is also very strange to me that you can only download a backup once every 24 hours. Given that you can't go back and restore a previous version like you can in Google, this is very frustrating especially if you are a project manager and make a lot of changes to plans within a given day.

That leads me to version history. Just like Google suite applications, I should be able to not only see version history, but be able to choose a version to restore from, which I cannot do and it's frustrating. It's especially cumbersome when you are testing out automations, formulas, or workflows. I have had glitches with formulas and workflows that have wiped out 100's of rows, and because there was no version history restoration I had to re-enter all of those things.

crawlings

Agreed! We are just starting out with Smartsheet as a business, we are looking to develop more of our internal forms etc in the system but the lack of an automated daily backup is making us think twice about the system. I have read the help guides and can see the 3rd party option, but this really feels like it should be a fundamental part of the system rather than a paid add on.

LaurenT28

Agreed! This is a huge oversight on Smartsheets part. Being able to restore to previous versions or locking attachments/comments etc is fundamental.

Donni

Agreed! The backup process needs to be upgraded significantly.

Rachel Beck

100% agreed. We recently had a user accidentally delete 29 rows on a customer's sheet. Unfortunately, the rows had attachments and comments that needed to be restored, and the csv file download from the activity log was only a fraction of the data lost. After reaching out to customer support, I was informed that restoring all attachments is not guaranteed. I am honestly surprised Smartsheet does not have a better backup feature. This seems pretty basic.

Kathy Nordeen

When accidentally overwritten, I was not able to revert to a prior version of smartsheet and completely recover my smartsheet. This meant I lost significant functionality in filters, formatting, formulats and dynamic views and information on other connected reports. This created a significant amount of work for me to recreate. I would like to have the ability to completely recover a sheet based on a date/time and have it completely recover the sheet and maintain the integrity of all the connected information, formatting, formulas, filters. etc. A single error created a terrible amount of work here and made me consider doing project plans in Excel where I can completely recover previous versions.

Megan_ClavieParker

Agreed, we need a true backup option! Especially given the glitch that allows rows to be overwritten if two people have a sheet open at the same time, we need to be able to see multiple past versions in order to recover lost data.

Barry Bowles

Smartsheet created a huge problem for most people who develop automations and dashboards and inter-connecting formulas when Smartsheet decided to only provide a data extract as a"backup". The only way I can do a backup in Smartsheet is to make a physical copy of every single sheet, dashboard, report etc (there is no facility to copy/backup automations yet).

The current backup system is inappropriately named as a "backup" and consitutes no more than doing an excel data export. We need a mirror backup of the entire developed application including every formula, automation, filter, report, dashboard, reminders, cell history logs etc. It is unthinkable that in today's tech environment Smartsheet leaves its users so exposed to critical failure.

Please STOP calling this a new "feature request" it is a critical business risk and therefore an absolute necessity to provide users with a full backup system and should be considered a system "fault" by Smartsheet.

I am tired of waiting for this to be fixed ... time to look at the competitors I think.

KC7

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/405762#Comment_405762

Hi crawlings, what 3rd party option is this for Smartsheet Solution/Environment Backup and Restoration? Not even Smartsheet Support or Smartsheet Customer Success Managers have mentioned that such a solution even exists.

marc4

If you want to back up a sheet and all the formulas you have to use the API with a command like:

https://api.smartsheet.com/2.0/sheets/3167404810364804?include=attachments"

where the 316... is the Sheet ID. You will get a file that has all the details. You could re-create the sheet from it.

You can run this on a daily or hourly basis to be able to roll back changes.

/marc

OshaK

100% agree! we have critical patient information that we report on in SmartSheet - I have almost 300 dashboards (and growing) just for this single project. it took us over a year to build what we have and our faculty want to expand it. So, it's absolutely critical for our operations to make sure we not only can restore the static data, but all the connections, links, formulas, dashboards etc.

SKahn

Completely agree! My sheets are not super complicated. Still, downloading an excel version of my sheet and re-uploading it into Smartsheet would cause us to lose way too much data - check boxes and other symbols, attachments, reminders, cell history, etc. There really needs to be a way to revert to a fully-functional version of a sheet before a specific change was made.

SKahn

Agree! Please see see Smartsheet Backup and Recovery discussion.