How do I prevent the Workspace panel from opening automatically?

Theresa Pulvere

Starting today, the Workspace panel opens every time I refresh my reports, which is constantly. Is this a new "feature"? I save and refresh my reports dozens of times a day and am now wasting time closing the Workspace panel so it doesn't block columns from view. Is there a setting I can change so the panel only opens when I choose to do so?

Thanks.

Isaac A.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to follow up and let you know that the issue with the workspace panel defaulting to open has been confirmed as resolved. You should no longer see the panel popping up each time.

Thank you again for your patience and feedback!

Cheers,
Isaac.

AravindGP

Hi @Theresa Pulvere

There isn't a way to turn this off. However, if you're refreshing your report to see data changes, try using the Refresh button in the report instead of the browser to avoid the workspace panel from showing up.

Greg Bond

The pop up of the Workspace panel is extremely irritating, it takes up too much screen space and doesn't need be constantly displayed. There needs to be a setting to allow the user to turn it on/off and the default should be set to off. Another feature rollout that is not well thought out.

Teresa Drury

PLEASE make this an OPTION. The Workspace Panel is not helpful and I am having to close it repeatedly.

Travis Sadlowski

Before about a week ago if you closed the workspace panel it would stay closed, now it re-opens every time I load or reload an object. I'm not sure why that change was put in, or made it into production, but it was not a good decision for everyone.

I work on a laptop that has limited screen space and have to reduce my Smartsheet view to 80% to see everything already, that workspace panel just takes up space unnecessarily.

I'm in Smartsheet all day; opening dozens of sheets, reports and dashboards possibly hundreds of times daily. Sure it takes two seconds to close, but doing it dozens and dozens of times over and over is a waste of my time. Please revert whatever was changed or give us an option to keep it closed.

Final item to AravindGP, refresh in a report only helps if you just need row data updates, if there were column changes to the base sheet it doesn't pull the updated information and it doesn't help when I already have 6-10 items open and need to close and reopen them.

ebudry

Smartsheet PLEASE STOP with these unnecessary updates that are making it so irritating for the end user. I am 1000% in alignment with other users - I need to close it out every single time i am navigating through all of my projects and it takes up entirely too much screen space. I don't need to see where something lives every time i open it up. If i wanted to know where exactly it lived i would just go to "save as" and see it there. This update, on top of moving the search bar, i mean come on. It's getting stupid. Smartsheet used to be the best and now all of these updates are making it so inefficient to be in the sheets. Just stop please - NO ONE asked for this.

TolerDo

I'm also disappointed by the workspace's default appearance. As a PM, many of our sheets are already extremely wide, and this just eats up the viewable real estate. I realize It's a first-world problem, having to click to close spaces before I start working. Between the workspace and conversation journal, it leaves little viewable space for the actual Smartsheet to start constructive work immediately upon launching.

I work in an organization with more than 50 workspaces and should likely be part of the population who would enjoy this change, but I don't. I understand why the change was made, but perhaps the perceived advantages are lost on me because of how I work.

KConrad

"You can just click to close the window" is not a viable solution as each click takes time. I would like to see the ability to turn it off. I don't understand the purpose of opening the window to begin with when I'm opening the Smartsheet objects from the workspace I really don't need a 'workspace window' to open to show me what workspace it's in.

Maybe make the window smart so that if the object is opened from a bookmark or external link then display the window and if the object is opened from within the workspace then don't display the window.

Nick Gagnon

This is incredibly irritating Smartsheet. PLEASE fix this!

Cheree Peterson

I read in another thread this has been disabled but mine is still popping up. Please provide a way to make this an option that we can choose or not. This is so frustrating and one of the reasons I do not like QBO - they keep "improving" things that just show up randomly with no way to revert or disable, but they interfere with my work process and make me less efficient.

Tara_Compass

Agreed with everyone above, please disable this or make it an option.

Isaac A.

Hi all,

We really appreciate your feedback and patience. Yesterday, our engineering team performed a rollback to address the issue with the workspace panel defaulting to open, but we've since received reports from users that it's still happening.

The issue has now been re-escalated, and our engineering team is actively working on a solution. While we don't have a specific ETA just yet, I'll keep everyone updated as soon as a full fix is in place. Your feedback is incredibly valuable to us, and we thank you for bearing with us through this.

Cheers,
Isaac.

CKopesky

I agree with the others in this thread, this new "feature" is not helpful and it actually rather irritating. Adding a setting to turn it off would be appreciated.

Isaac A.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to follow up and let you know that the issue with the workspace panel defaulting to open has been confirmed as resolved. You should no longer see the panel popping up each time.

Thank you again for your patience and feedback!

Cheers,
Isaac.

K N

Hey Isaac,

This morning when I opened Smartsheet, the workspace panel is still there. Would you let the engineering team know? Thanks.

Isaac A.

Hi @K N!

Thanks for reaching out! I haven’t seen other reports of this issue since the fix was implemented. In this case, the best way forward would be to contact our support team for further troubleshooting through a private channel. You can reach them here: Smartsheet Support Portal.

Cheers,
Isaac.