Edited CONTACTS - flowing to other sheets

David Cromer

If I edit a contact in My Contacts (the Name portion, not the email), will that flow to everywhere the contact is used (all sheets)? It appears the answer is no, and it takes manually editing each instance of the contant on all individual sheets.

Hoping this is not the case, or there's an easy solution or workaround.

thanks, Dave

Genevieve P.

Hi @David Cromer

The way to make the Contact name flow correctly into new sheets is to have the user update it in their personal profile settings. This will then be the "default" name for that Contact and will appear when you go to share a sheet, etc. Changing the name in your personal Contacts changes it just for your account, but there are instances where their selected name in their settings will appear instead.

If you have a "nickname" for that contact (manually applied name in a cell / sheet) then that will stay as the nickname and you may need to remove & refresh that Contact. Here's more information: Manage which contacts appear when you type in a cell

Cheers,

Genevieve

David Cromer

@Genevieve P. , thank you for the response, great info.

I should have clarified that I'm referring to Contacts that are outside of our organization. People that we email and call on the phone separate from Smartsheet, but we keep their contact info as a reference for all our internal stakeholder's use.

We're looking for a solution for the end-user of a Dashboard to have the ability to hot-link, or at least highlight/copy, or a copy option for extracting Email address and Phone Numbers from the Dashboard. Our Job Dashboards are all the same, about 30 of them, and they are auto populated from metadata sheets with the outside stakeholder's Contact info I've pre-populated in my My Smartsheet Contacts. I am the owner of all Sheets / Reports / Dashboards / Forms, and originator of most of the Outside Stakeholder's Smartsheet Contacts, as it relates to our Smartsheet systems.

That said, we don't want to have to manually type, or even manually copy/paste when setting up a new Job. We use a template set I created for each Job. All data is powered by 1 unique identfier for the Job, and it pulls all the metadata in to one sheet that drives all the widgets for the standard DB... this is why a Rich Text widget isn't the best option for quick creation and accuracy with these Jobs. And we're going to double out business over the next 12 mos.

I know I'm missing the mark, and the answer is likely right in front of me, but any insight/advice you can provide would be greatly appreciated!

Kind Regards,

Dave

David Cromer

👆🏼 @Genevieve P., the above was an additional question. My original question still applies as it relates to the Outside Stakeholder 'My Smartsheet Contacts' I've prepopulated for our Team to use as a reference. Just want to see how I manage those between our many sheets these contacts are in.

Genevieve P.

Hi @David Cromer

Thank you for the clarification! The contacts being outside of your organization / Smartsheet plan does make a difference. I don't believe there's a way to bulk-update the names in your "My Contacts" list, you will need to do that individually.

Keep in mind that if these users do have a Smartsheet account, sharing sheets or items will default to their actual name, not the name you've assigned in your Contacts.

David Cromer

Thank you. if you have any comments or input on this question, that would be great:

... We're looking for a solution for the end-user of a Dashboard to have the ability to hot-link, or at least highlight/copy, or a copy option for extracting Email address and Phone Numbers from the Dashboard. Our Job Dashboards are all the same, about 30 of them, and they are auto populated from metadata sheets with the outside stakeholder's Contact info I've pre-populated in my My Smartsheet Contacts. I am the owner of all Sheets / Reports / Dashboards / Forms, and originator of most of the Outside Stakeholder's Smartsheet Contacts, as it relates to our Smartsheet systems.

That said, we don't want to have to manually type, or even manually copy/paste when setting up a new Job. We use a template set I created for each Job. All data is powered by 1 unique identfier for the Job, and it pulls all the metadata in to one sheet that drives all the widgets for the standard DB... this is why a Rich Text widget isn't the best option for quick creation and accuracy with these Jobs. And we're going to double out business over the next 12 mos...

Genevieve P.

Hi @David Cromer

I understand why you don't want to use a rich text widget based on that description, however the rich text widget is the easiest one to display information like this since emails can then be used as MailTo links (here's more information).

I believe your account has access to Pro Desk sessions - I would recommend booking a 30minute screen share session as it sounds like you process is likely best understood visually. They may have some additional tips and tricks!

Cheers,

Genevieve