We need the Owner (or Creator) back

MCorbin

The Owner column has disappeared from the Browse Menu. I recognize that Smartsheet is moving away from ownership, however, Admins, supervisors, etc. need to be able to see who is responsible for that sheet/asset for a variety of reasons.

Using the "Admins" isn't going to work. All of our assets are in workspaces, by policy, and there are multiple admins in any given workspace, but that doesn't mean each admin knows something about every asset in that workspace. We need to know who created/manages that asset specifically.

**To answer the question about what happens when an owner leaves the company: Their assets are transferred to another licensed user specified by the previous owner's supervisor before removing the Owner's account.

Samuel Mueller

it is very important to know where something came from. I have hundreds of items shared to me in my sheets folder with no clue where they came from.

E Freeman

We need this feature back ASAP…………I'm confused about why this change was made.

Sara_Cook

100% agree. Need this back ASAP, it is hindering work.

MCorbin

@E Freeman - they are moving away from individual asset ownership and towards "Plan" ownership of all assets. This will make some things better - such as your dashboards, reports, automations wont break because the person who created them left the company. But they're failing to understand that we USE that information. We need to be able to see who created/manages a given sheet. Their solution is to look at the Admins, but that is flawed. People may be granted Admin access at a workspace level, but have nothing to do with that particular asset.

Samuel Mueller

Maybe something called "Asset Lead" or some way to identify who is responsible for the asset. Something that can easily be updated by Admins

Maddy.Craytor

It would be very helpful to have the asset creator information easily available. I have many sheets shared with me and I can no longer tell which team shared them with me because the Owner column disappeared. Like MCorbin said, looking at the Admins isn't always helpful - I know there are sheets in one of my workspaces that I'm not responsible for managing and could not answer questions about.

Delta615

Maddy.craytor's comment is most aligned with how my team and I had used the "owner" column. The idea of moving away from individual ownership to workspace owners is fine. For all intents and purposes, however, the owner column was synonymous with creator. There were certainly times when ownership changed but assets are predominantly owned by the creator and knowing who created an asset in a workspace with multiple administrators/lots of items is extremely helpful.

ChrisMcG

any progress on addressing this? This was a real shortsighted decision for removal: bring it back so ol' chris can find his sheets from various divisions at a glance again!!

Also, am I missing the meetings where the community can weigh in on these changes before you publish them?? This is one of a SERIES of changes that absolutely make Smartsheets less usable and desirable……

Joe Goetschel

I would agree we do need this. Another situation this has caused is trying to remove yourself from sharing.

If you try and remove yourself from a workspace, I will not if you own anything in that workspace. Since you can't see this quickly, you will need to go into each asset to find out separately.

I have also had several customers reach out in frustration since they would use this to find sheet quicker in workspaces and in their sheets folder. A lot of the time they can not remember the name of the sheet but they remember who it came from etc.

Here are other columns that would be very helpful in the browser view

• Created Date
• External Sharing (True / false or check box)
• How many users are shared

It would be great if you could pick and choose what you want to see and just add all the data available

sheilabrear

I have been using Smartsheet for about 10 years, in three different workplaces. I have found it an invaluable tool. However, the removal of the identification of the "owner" (or "creator") has created enormous challenges for me at work, due to the large number of shared sheets that have similar names. Now I need to open each sheet to identify it and this creates an undue burden due to the time it takes. I did not receive the announcement (I am not listed as the admin at my workplace). A workaround would be to ask collaborators to enter their name first before the file name, but it is too late for us to implement this. I would greatly appreciate having the option to restore the previous version. Thank you!

CCraig

I agree. We need this feature back. Where I currently work, ALL data is owned by the company, so even though collaborators create files on behalf of the department, the department email should be the owner of all work regardless of who created the file.

ed.jaro

Just to add my two cents. I would like to see this come back. It gives me a point of contact for deleting sheets that seem to be no longer used. Granted there is a long way around to achieve this.