Calendar App - lock fields

Lindsay B

Hello community - need help locking fields in the calendar app. I want to use it to have people sign up for classes over a 3-month period. I only want them to be able to input their name/email into the calendar. I tried locking the columns on the sheet itself but it still allowed people to change any of the fields when using the calendar.

Genevieve P.

Hi @Lindsay B

Can you clarify who it is that's editing the fields in the Calendar App? If the users are shared as Admins on the source sheets then they can edit locked cells/columns, but if they're only Editors on the source sheet, those locked fields should be locked in the Calendar App as well.

If they need to have Admin permissions on the source sheet, you could surface the same data as column formulas (hidden columns in the main sheet with a few =[Column Reference]@row formulas). That would keep them locked in the Calendar App for all users.

Cheers,
Genevieve

Lindsay B

The above answer is not what I heard from your support team, this is what I got back from them:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Smartsheet Support. I understand that you are using the Calendar App and would like to make some fields editable while leaving other fields read only I also understand that some of the users will not have access to a Smartsheet account and therefore can not be shared to the underlying sheet. I'd be happy to further advise on this.

 There currently isn't a way  to set read only fields from within the Calendar app, in Smartsheet. 

When you have a moment, please submit your feature request to the Product team by signing in to the online Community (the Community uses your Smartsheet account to sign in) and create an Idea post in the Smartsheet Product Feedback and Ideas topic [community.smartsheet.com]. 

Posting your enhancement in the Community will allow other Smartsheet users to see and vote on your idea! The top-voted posts in this category are reviewed monthly by the Product team and you'll receive an email notification if a status changes for a post you've created or voted on.  

Genevieve P.

Hi @Lindsay B

You are correct: there is no way from within the Calendar App to mark specific fields as read-only, this configuration would need to be done in the source sheet or by surfacing fields that we know can only be read-only (such as a column that uses a column formula).

In your case, if your users only have Editor access to the underlying sheet or they don't have any access at all, they will not be able to edit fields that are associated with locked columns in the underlying sheet. Again, this is not a configuration in the Calendar App, but in the original, source sheet. Does that make sense?

Here's a test source sheet, with me as the owner/admin. As you can see, I can edit the Status column even though it's locked because I own the sheet:

In the same way, I can edit the Status column in the Calendar App:

But my friend shared with Editor permissions on the sheet sees an error message for that field. Since she cannot edit the Status in the Sheet, she can't edit the Status in the Calendar App either:

Cheers,
Genevieve