Dynamic View Comments notifications for user without access to source sheet

JSpears

@Thiara Perez - That user is able to @mention you because you are shared to the sheet. You cannot @mention her because she is NOT shared (at least Commenter access) to the underlying sheet.

To get around the design flaw of not showing any visual indicator of comments or attachments, I created checkmark column in the sheet and set it to check the box if there was an attachment added. Then I added that column to the main view on DV so that people could see if there was an attachment. You could do something similar whenever a comment is added to the row to check a box and add that column to your DV main view.

It's clunky and should be fixed in DV, but it's a work around.

Thiara Perez

@JSpears thank you for the suggestion, I didn't think about a checkmark. But the problem I see is, I need an indication for a new comment; not just when there is a comment because then it'll stay permanently checked regardless of the comment being new or not. The only thing I thought of as a workaround is conditional formatting. Let me explain:

I have an "assigned to" column and have the "latest comment" column on. Then, I have a helper "send alert?" column with a formula to enter 'Yes' if the last to comment is NOT in the "assign to", otherwise, enter no". Then I have an automation to send a email to the "assigned to" IF my helper column says yes. Basically, "notify the person assigned if the last comment in this row is from anyone but themselves". I also added conditional formatting to highlight the row when the helper column says YES because it indicates that the last comment is from me. Conditional Formatting is visible in DV so that shows where the latest comment is.

The formula I am using is this: =IF([Latest Comment]@row <> "", IF(CONTAINS([Assigned To]@row, [Latest Comment]@row), "No", "Yes"))

NOW, the issue is, the formula in the helper column only works if the row is assigned to only one person. Once the row is assigned to multiple people, the helper column will always says "Yes", no matter who's name is the Latest Comment". Not sure if the problem is the way the formula is written?

meagans

In the future, my team would love to be able to tag individuals with their Contact Name in Dynamic Views' comments. At the time of writing, this is only possible by @ mentioning their email address.

Marvin Daniels

I need to echo the sentiment of most of the posts in this thread. Commenting and attachments should not require any level of access to the underlying source. It completely defeats the Dynamic View where we precisely define what that view can do and who is allowed to do it. I think most would also like an option to suppress the sheet link in the comment notification.

FTudor

Any update on commenting not requiring any level of access to the underlying sheet?

MHalvey

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/443808#Comment_443808

I haven't been able to the popup to @Mention to users who aren't shared with the source data (sheet, reports, dynamic views). You can force the @Mention by writing the full email "@email" and the alert will go out but it's not an intuitive as those who are shared with the source data. The alert also adds the source sheet so when the user clicks the link, it takes them to the source sheet to request access which causes all sorts of confusion. It's the biggest hurdle I have right now with ticket systems built using workapps/dynamic views.

-Michael