Alternative to reports to enable user filtering

Deborah Kramer

Hi,

I work for a health insurance company and we created a Smartsheet to facilitate onboarding new providers to our network. We have several teams in our department (contracting, provider service representatives, credentialing, data entry, etc) and I created a main sheet for status updates from each team - each row is a provider, the columns represent status updates from each team.

However, some teams such as contracting need several additional columns just for what they do and so rather than make one huge sheet, I added their specific columns to the last columns of the main sheet and then hid them. Then I made them a report and filtered it by just the providers who are being newly contracted (others are simply joining physician groups that are already under contract).

However, they are complaining that the report can't be sorted and filtered by them like one could do on the main sheet. What are my options?

1. I believe I could get them all licenses (if IT has bought enough), then make them all admins. However, wouldn't that just mean that they could filter the report the same way I do - in other words, it would be filtered or sorted for everyone on the team, rather than having their own filters that don't affect the others the way you can do on the main sheet?
2. Force them to go back to using the main sheet and just unhide all the extra columns? I have another report for another team, so going that route makes for a very wide sheet.
3. I read something about Dynamic View but I don't fully understand it yet. I know the purpose of it is so that a user can't see the main sheet, but I don't want to restrict them from seeing the main sheet. Is this something I should pursue?
4. If I make them their own sheet, it would just mean updating in two places, right? I know you can link cells, but with 150 rows, having to link cells one-by-one doesn't seem particularly practical.

Is there a better way than reports to achieve my goals of:

1. Narrowing down the rows for them (yes, I know they could filter the main sheet to do this)
2. Keeping the main sheet fairly high level and uncluttered but that anyone could view it, filter it and update it as needed?

Matt Johnson

Hi @Deborah Kramer

I would create new reports for all of, or most of, the options that they want and put shortcuts to all of them on a Dashboard. This Dashboard would function more like a Home Page than a normal Dashboard. I've done this before and sometimes it ends up where the order of the shortcuts become the steps in order to complete something.

I would avoid making everyone Admins. That usually ends up where everyone is changing column header names or unlocking rows or columns and not locking them back. Or, adding a column named one thing and hiding it on the sheet but visible on their report. Then someone else comes along and adds another column named something very similar but tracks a different thing. Then when someone else goes to make a report they aren't sure which column is the right one and from there the data is at risk.

Another method of gaining user adoption to this method is to set up meetings and have the users direct you as you add the columns so they get a sense of ownership to the report.

I hope that helps.

Matt