"Smarter" UI UX related to Pivot System Limitations

Paris.TechProjSpec

Idea: either enhance Pivot App ability to take a user's dropdown list items and add any/all "calculation" & "concatenation" characters (where Smartsheet adds text/characters to the user's values indicating what value it is calculating and the calculation used) to column headers, or enhance messaging to the user which explains how their sheet's dropdown list values will be impacted in other Smartsheet Apps that they have as part of their account.

Current State: currently, if the users wants to be able to chart a dropdown list from their source sheet, into the columns of another sheet via Pivot App, if the calculations from the Value section when creating a Pivot adds enough characters for the value and calculation used) (i.e. "[Dropdown Value] - [Value used in Value column of Pivot] - [Calculation used]") that it hits a limit, the user clicks "Create" at the end of configuring the Pivot, and the wheel just spins and spins and never gives and error or explains the issue to the user. This causes the user to have to open a ticket and go through the initial screenings (which seem to make sure the user is in fact using Smartsheet, on a functioning network, etc.), escalations to technicians who actually gather what is happening, and then eventually a response regarding the limitations which could have been communicated at other use junctures.

Justification:

The sheets should have built in structures/limitations which would support the apps being able to execute their functions (for example, the product development team determines their solution adds up to x characters so the dropdown list values must be x characters before it tosses an error “this value exceeds the character limit for use as columns in Pivot App” and could even allow the user to override it if they don’t use Pivot? Etc.).

We won’t be able to change the values in our dropdown list (which apply to years of data). We imagine we aren't the only impacted users.

The user could probably create multiple pivots with the desired dropdown list in the rows and then create multiple Data Mesh configurations to fuse everything together; a cumbersome workaround, and I hope a better solution becomes available in the future!

P.S. for the product development team, related support ticket for full context and detailed example of what happens to customers/users who currently get stuck due to the limitations/issues, and lack of communication from the system in relation to them - 06655563: Pivot creation getting "stuck" at the very last click ("Create")