"Why not?" Enhancement Requests that Smartsheet Should Just Do

Scott Orsey

I've been a SS user going on five years and am a huge fan and advocate. I value this community, and Smartsheet is, in general, AMAZING. However, I find myself regularly scratching my head about why some seemingly simple enhancements that I've seen suggested by the user community just don't get prioritized. I was talking with my colleague @Lauren Dominique and she suggested taking this to the Forum.

This post is an opportunity to share a few enhancements that have generated the most frustration for me in hopes of commiserating with the larger community and, who knows, maybe geting SS to take a little action. I am confident that these have been suggested multiple times through enhancement requests, so this post is just to ventilate a bit. I've tried to restrict this list to those enhancements that I suspect are reasonably simple. I have a "complex" dream list too, but I'll save that for another day.

1) Function to pull Nth value from a multiselect field. We have COUNTM() that can count how many values have been entered in a multiselect and INDEX() that can pull the Nth value from a range, WHY NOT an INDEXM() function that can return the Nth value from a multiselect?

2) Function that can display text for a hyperlink. We have the ability to create Display Text for a static hyperlink in a cell, WHY NOT have a HYPERLINK() function that allows the hyperlink or display text to be calculated by a formula?

3) Function that converts a value to text in a specified number format. We have the ability to set the display formatting for a column and the VALUE() function can transform text into a number, WHY NOT a TEXT() function that converts a number or date into text using a desired number format?

4) Accept ranges in the SUBSTITUTE function. WHY NOT allow ranges for the "old_text" and "new_text" so that we can swap many old_texts for new_texts without nesting many Substitute functions?

5) Set a Cell Value in an Automation to the value from another cell. WHY NOT? (I acknowledge this could create the risk of infinite automation looping, but that doesn't seem insurmountable). Relatedly, allowing us to do something in a workflow after setting a value would be nice too.

6) Copy a subset of columns to a different sheet. We can move/copy the entire row, WHY NOT let us specify the fields that we want to copy?

7) Automate the ability to promote or demote a row to be a parent/child. We can do this manually, WHY NOT make this an automation option?

8) Smartsheet eliminates extra spaces in a cell making it hard to line up text in multiline text boxes. WHY NOT allow us to pad a cell with spaces if needed?

9) Even though we can raise a value to an exponent, logarithms are unavailable. WHY NOT have a LOG() or LN() function?

Feel free to comment or add your own SIMPLE fixes that need attention. I'd love to see your thoughts.

Genevieve P.

Hey @Scott Orsey

Thank you for your feedback! We love hearing about how you're using Smartsheet and what you would prioritize as updates. The Community is great for chatting with other Smartsheet users, but I would like to make sure you know that if you want this feedback to go to the Product team at Smartsheet, the only area of the site they regularly review for feedback is the Product Ideas section of the forum.

A number of your suggestions are already posted as Ideas that you can vote on:

• 2 - HYPERLINK Function
• 5 - Workflow enhancement - copy a column/cell to another column/cell
• 6 - Select which columns to copy or move from one sheet to another
• 7 - Indent child records based on formula or automation

For any of your other suggestions, if you create a separate Idea type of post per-suggestion, this will allow other Community members to vote on them as well! 🙂

Cheers,

Genevieve

Scott Orsey

Thanks @Genevieve P.

I have posted the additional 5 ideas to the idea section. I am also just interested in just commiserating. I know it's impossible for a development team to do everything. Hope this helps.