Automate Access to Workspace

RyanFMurphy

Hi everyone,

I have a workspace with a variety of sheets, reports and dashboards. I am using a sheet to keep track of who has access to the workspace (as a "user sheet"), which is also connected to a separate third-party automation I had developed to associate users to their submissions via other sheets (which is working flawlessly).

I had set up a form connected to the "user sheet" that automatically adds them into the sheet as a new row, then notifies me so that I know to manually add them into the workspace permissions. I'd like to see if I can remove this manual step.

Is there a way to set up an automation to add that user into the workspace permissions with Comment access?

Thanks in advance!

Matt Johnson

Hi @RyanFMurphy

Do you use Groups at all? It might be a good option for what you are describing. Maybe investigate that a little.

I hope that helps.

Matt

RyanFMurphy

Hi @Matt Johnson,

I'm not sure if my organization is using Groups but, if we are, I don't believe my workspace is associated to that at all. Do you think this is a better way to manage permissions for my workspace? I'm using this "user sheet" for a separate application to connect user's submissions to their Smartsheet contact card for automated notifications.

Thanks!

Matt Johnson

Hi @RyanFMurphy

Groups are the best way to manage sharing. It works especially well at the Workspace level. You have to have the "Group Admin" switch turned on by your Smartsheet account admin within your company. There's some best practices to consider when using Groups like establishing a naming structure and limiting the amount of people that can set Groups up. Once they're set up, you simply start typing the name of the group in the Share field when sharing and it will find the Group as an option.

I don't follow exactly what you're saying with the user submissions and auto-notifications but you might be over complicating it or you might be onto something super awesome with using what you've built along with the Groups functionality.

The best thing about Groups is when you hire someone new or someone switches roles internally, you simply add them to a Group (1 add in 1 spot) and that person then has access to everything everywhere where that Group is shared. Also, if someone is a Viewer in a Group but they need to be an editor on 1 sheet, you can leave them in the Group Shared to that sheet and then also add that 1 user as an editor to that 1 sheet and it will override the Viewer permission for that 1 person on the 1 sheet.

Let me know if you have any more questions but I you should definitely look into it.

I hope that helps.

Matt