How to create an "Update Employee Information" form or integration w/o sheet access

Question

Okay, I'm going to try and explain this and hopefully it makes sense.

I have begun creation of a workapp to integrate all the various tools we need as a company to onboard employees and I've run into a wall with one aspect.

First of all, i am creating this so that all the dozens and dozens of hiring managers in the company at site level do not need to be taught how to use complicated computing systems like excel and smart sheet.  I want them to fill forms and the rest is automated.  So the first sheet I am creating is the employee metadata sheet which will contain all their information from name to emergency contacts to uniform size etc.  This was easy and the corresponding form simple as pie.  So now a manager can input a new employees data by filling the form without ever touching something they might not be familiar with such as a smartsheet.  Great.

My problem is when that metadata needs to be updated.  I don't want the managers going into that sheet as it will contain personal information from people all over the country they have nothing to do with, once completely set up, potentially up to 9000 people will be active on that sheet at any given time.  So I want a way for the manager to open a form of some sort, and be able to easily find that employee so that they can update that particulars employees metadata without every seeing the smartsheet.  The problem with a dropdown is you have to populate it first and at any given time dozens of employees will become active or inactive in a day, no one has time to continuously manually populate a dropdown, so the information that would be on a drop down if that is the solution would need to self populate.

My company works with the entire microsoft 365 suite so any integrations this would need is it does in fact need it (not integrating and using host sheets or whatever would be better) would be best using a microsoft app of some sort.

Brian_Richardson · Accepted Answer

If you are (I assume you are) capturing the manager's contact in the metadata then you can setup a report that filters for "Manger has any of Current User".  Then put that report in your Workapp.  Managers can click that report and see only their staff, which they can then update.  You can include only the columns you care about updating in the report, and they can make their updates there.  Simple as pie, no complicated training needed, everyone understands how to fill out a cell or pick something else.

You can enhance their experience by grouping the report in a way that will make sense to them, to help them quickly find the employees they care about.  ie group by Location, or Cost Center, or something similar.

When you put a report like this into Workapps, you don't have to share the report and sheet with the managers.  Workapp permissions will take over.

You can also include web content like MS365 in workapps, so if you have reference information or something you want updated there, include it in your workapp for one-stop-shopping.

Another approach, maybe a complementary one to the Workapp, is to use Update Request automations.  Trigger the automation in the metadata sheet based on either timing (update your people every month) or a trigger like "person was hired 6 months ago".  The update request will go to the manager's email, they click in email and will get a web form where you define the fields to update.  They fill those/update them in a simple form and hit submit, no Smartsheet knowledge necessary.