Automation for Reports

Rishea Johnson

Good day,

My department currently has 2 Smartsheets and 1 report for processing requests from external users. These sheets are not public, and the governing bodies are against making them public due to internal conversations documented on the sheets.

We would GREATLY benefit from automation in this process, but the requirement to keep the sheets private is a huge hindrance. We have to communicate with these external users, but currently, it is by email which is tedious and causes requests to fall through the cracks. My only idea, outside of creating another Smarthsheet, is to create a report, make it public and add automation to the report (i.e. reaching out to the submitter and notifying them that their request has been approved, denied, needs clarification, etc). However, I see that it is not possible to have automation in reports. I am posing the question: does anyone have any tips/tricks/suggestions for the above topic? I've been wracking my brain for months. Also, would anyone mind explaining why reports do not have automation and if this could be added?

Thank you for your time,

Rishea

dhutchens

Hi Rishea,

Not sure if I completely understand the request but I may have 2 ideas. If you don't have a lot of external stakeholders to communicate with, you could create a report for each stakeholder that returns the items for just that stakeholder. You could then setup the report to send automatically every day, week, or month. You could utilize a form to have them submit their requests.

You could also utilize row alerts and send only specific columns based on whatever criteria is required.

Rmcamp900

Hi @dhutchens ,

I have created reports that filter down the data i want to share with my external stakeholders. How do i get the report sent to the stakeholders each week/month. I have checked approval autimation and that is not suitable, neither is the notify function. Publish just gives you a link. How do a i get a snap shot or a csv sent to external clients autmatically?

Paul Newcome

@Rishea Johnson You can create a report and then create an automation in both of the sheets. In that automation, you would include a link to the report, and you can adjust the settings to not include a link to the sheet in the alert.

@Rmcamp900 You can set up a recurring send of this exactly. Please see the link below:

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/516096-sharing-sending-reports