Changes to asset Admin permissions and new Plan Asset Admin role, now generally available!

Lekshmi Unnithan

Update on 03/25/2024: Phase 1 of the asset ownership changes is now available for all customers.

Hi Community, 

Currently, core Smartsheet assets (such as sheets, reports, forms, and dashboards) are owned by individuals in a plan. However, the current ownership model can create friction when key stakeholders or asset owners leave the plan or organization. In order to combat this, we are making some changes to improve the experience of SysAdmins and end users by moving the ownership of assets from the individual to the plan level.

We will be launching these changes in multiple phases. In the first phase, we will upgrade the permissions of Admins on a core Smartsheet asset to that of an Owner and introduce a new Plan Asset Admin role.

The release will contain the changes we originally listed:

• Introduction of the new Plan Asset Admin role
• Enabling Admins on an asset to have the same permissions as Owner (rename/delete)
• Updating the Access Request notification flow to
• Send access request to owner and admin(s)
• If owner is deactivated and no admins exist, send to Plan Asset Admin
• If no Plan Asset Admin is assigned, send to SysAdmin

If you have admins in a workspace or on an asset, they will get the access requests notification. This is to ensure the requests are going to people who are managing the asset and the requests aren’t bottlenecked on an individual person. It helps solve the issue when the owner is no longer at the company or on vacation and the access requests are not fulfilled.

If you have current Admins who should not be approving access, we recommend lowering their access level to be Editors. We are also looking at introducing a new permission on assets between Editor and Admin that may help in the future. This was hinted at in the following blog that also talks about some of the new features that are also coming.

Future phases will involve the deprecation of the “Owner” permission on core Smartsheet assets, sometime in 2024. More details will be provided in the coming months.

These changes will impact all users in all plan types in the Commercial US and EU instances of Smartsheet.

Learn more about these changes.

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Cheers,

Lekshmi Unnithan

The Smartsheet Product Team

darkmatter

this sounds interesting. Will this role type also be available for Smartsheet WorkApps? Currently, only an individual can own an App - which can make it frustrating to administer the App when that individual is away from the business.

rosegarretson

This seems very logical - I know in the past we have run across some hurdles when a team member leaves. Thanks for the info.

Matt Rasmussen

Great feature. People leave and the Smartsheet asset is in limbo until an admin assigns a new owner and resets the sharing permissions.

Darla Brown

Looking forward to learning all about this. Love the idea and second what @darkmatter said. We definitely need it for WorkApp!!

QuanT

@darkmatter The initial launch doesn't include Workapps but it is something we're working on and will be part of future phases.

Samuel Mueller

Very exciting, thank you for the update.

Julie Becker

I am so glad this is being rolled out. I am currently in charge of everything in our account, but a few people insist that they control their sheets, making it harder for me to help them when needed or deal with other issues. Even though i can just transfer ownership into my name at any time (without their permission), this new feature will automatically take care of this making it so much easier to oversee / manage EVERYTHING in the account (without having to manually transfer ownership of new sheets weekly/monthly, like i am already having to do). Since I am the only one that activates / deactivates / delete all users in our account, transferring owned items will be one less task I have to do, making the overall process more efficient and manageable.

The only thing I see causing a headache for some plan users is this below: Asset ownership updates

To ensure existing System Admins can’t access specific assets, the team requiring special confidentiality may consider using a separate plan that they manage on their own, and not grant access to any other users.

Not everyone will be able to open additional accounts to control security related content (not an issue for our companies set up right now), which will be concerning for some as it can/will expose those items without many being aware. Maybe the Smartsheet R&D Team can look into a "Security Asset Ownership" option so those items can be managed by specific people who were originally overseeing those items initially? 🤔

Regardless, this overall upgrade/release is crucial to many of us who struggle to manage / oversee most of the content (assets) in our account(s) and looking forward to testing this out during the EAP stages. 😉

Patrick I H

I look forward to this. Our current issue is there is no way to copy or reassign integration workflows. Hopefully this will resolve that issue.

QuanT

@Patrick I H The initial launch doesn't solve for workflow reassignment but we are working closely with the workflows team on ownership changes. We plan on launching more changes around ownership throughout the year

LyndaVance

Will the update allow for Plan Backups so we do not have to rely on the "creator" of the sheet to do this? There have been several incidents where the creator never set up backups for their items and had to learn the hard way. They needed the backup, but it was never set up and countless hours were sent to recreate information.

Kayla

Will notifications that previously came from the 'Sheet Owner' now come from the 'Sheet Creator' --- or will that also be changed so we can pick who the notification comes from?

For example, we have our compliance items come from the compliance director (someone they recognize the name) so when the Smartsheet Automation comes through, it also includes her name so people open it and review it -- know it's important. We would absolutely want to maintain that.

Don Young

I agree with @Julie Becker - making a change such that folks will be required to spend more money & create/manage a separate account in order to isolate private files seems like a potentially unnecessary backward step. Hopefully you are able to find a way to avoid removal of this existing capability before broadly rolling out.

DanMorales

Will there be changes to the API that will be deployed with this release? If so, could you please share the documented changes?

Gabriel Barrera

This is a step in the right direction!

We've recently had to go through the process of managing/transferring assets from one user to another - and it wasn't the most intuitive system. I think this is a great change.

We would love to see ability to query a user's associated automations as well. Or an option to transfer automations to another if the user being removed is the recipient.

Chris Schuh

I noticed in the email communication about the change that there might be a change to the SAML single sign-on connection. We have already set up SAML for our organization, will we need to update the settings when these changes go into effect? If so, when should we make these changes to ensure no disruptions to our end users?