New solution panel makes collaboration even easier!

John Hieger

Hi Community, 

Our new Workspace solution panel makes building powerful, collaborative solutions in Smartsheet easier than ever. Our latest development incorporates your feedback and takes Workspaces to new heights with a left-hand panel that simplifies navigation enabling you to build, organize and tailor solutions so you can easily share them to better collaborate across the organization. 

This update introduces a Workspace solution panel that allows you to view all Workspace content while working on an individual sheet, report, folder or dashboard as well as easily switch between them in your Workspace. You can also quickly create new assets in your Workspace leveraging the new “Create” button for even easier team alignment and solution creation. 

This is available for all plans. 

Help article here:

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Note: Over the next week we will be releasing the new solution panel to our customers in phases: enabling it for some of our users on August 3rd and gradually increasing the percentage until reaching 100% on August 11th August 21st. We've shifted our rollout for full user implementation. It will be more gradual and extend into September. We will come back with an update once the rollout is 100% complete. Thank you for your patience.

Cheers,

John Hieger, Product Marketing Manager

(Non-activated view)

Cheri Pool

Has this feature been rolled back? This was enabled for me earlier this week but is no longer available.

bugra

@Cheri Pool - It was rolled back due to an issue but we are slowly enabling it back now. You should have it some time in the next few business days.

Cheri Pool

Thank you for the update! I found the Solution Panel very helpful!

John Hieger

As a heads up, we are now targeting 8/21 to reach 100% roll out of the solution panel.

Steve_Mitchell

Thanks for the update. I also had it and found it useful then lost it and was about to ask support about it.

John Hieger

We've shifted our rollout for full user implementation. It will be more gradual and extend into September. We will come back with an update once the rollout is 100% complete. Thank you for your patience.

ker9

I don't have the Solution Panel option but I am having a lot of problems with workspaces jumping from the left-hand workspace browser panel to the main area and not being able to get back to the panel. I need to move something from one workspace to another but with the disappearing panel I can't see the other workspace. I can't get the panel back unless I go to Home and then Workspaces Browse icon again.

It seems like it happens when a workspace has many items under it but not for smaller workspaces.

I really need to see everything in the Browse panel.

Genevieve P.

@ker9 what you're describing is an unrelated issue that has been resolved this week 🙂

ker9

@Genevieve P. - thank you, I noticed improvement yesterday. Wasn't sure if it was related or not.

Veronica.Cortes

Is there a way to hide this, and I don't mean once it's opened and clicking on the 'x' to close. I mean shutting off!

This is actually useless to me if I cannot turn off, due to the fact that Smartsheet hasn't corrected their Sharing options.

We have projects in their own workspace that we need to share with clients, but this workspace also has sheets we do not wish visible to the client. However, without having to share individual sheets and reports and dashboards (this is the sharing issue with Smartsheet, it's all or nothing), we opted for a workspace. It worked great before this unnecessary feature was rolled out and once again Smartsheet disappoints. An all or nothing feature. So now for the 100s of projects we have, I must change all the sharing permissions. What gives Smartsheet? Can we fix things that are more useful, either fix the sharing or allow to turn off this workspace panel as needed.

alan.arrowsmith

Like Veronica, I would also like to have this turned off by default. I have at least 7 Smartsheet tabs pinned for quick reference purposes. It takes up a lot of screen space and I rarely need to use it. Being able to set a preference for this in Personal Settings would be great.

John Hieger

Thanks for the feedback, our product team is actively looking into new sharing options to address the all-or-nothing sharing limitations. We will have more news to share later this year. An additional note about the functionality, if users prefer the additional screen real estate, users can click the "X" in the solution panel to close it and we will preserve the closed state the next time you open that sheet, dashboard, and report!

SPBops

Greetings! John - it does not appear to preserve the closed state, and like Veronica and Alan, it is adding productivity disruption having to keep hitting "x" on the solution panel when it suddenly pops open on its own. Please expedite a solution to the solution panel's intrusions!

James Emge

Please provide the option to turn this feature off. I am sure some find it helpful, though it seems to duplicate the Favorites feature which I prefer, and having to close it down each day to get my screen real estate back is annoying.

Nik Fuentes

I would also like to voice a need for a "default off" setting for the Solution Panel.

It's not useless, I appreciate it for when I need to quickly jump one sheet/etc over, but I do not use it 98% of the time. I work out of browse view and open pretty much everything in a new tab via Ctrl + Left Click, which you cannot do from the Solution Panel.

My bigger issue is with the amount of space it takes up. I often work on wide sheets with freezes, so between the Solutions Panel on the left and the Conversations/etc panel on the right, I'm often losing 1/3+ of my screen real estate upon opening a sheet. I can close it, but I have to do so manually, on every of the often dozen+ sheets/reports I open inside an hour. It's frustrating, especially if I have to do so with every new session.

It's a nice feature, but not for my purposes. I want to have it, but not when I don't need it. A "default off" sessing somewhere would solve all my issues with it.

Any idea if this has been submitted as a Feature/Feedback Request?