Contact List Functionality in Forms

LyndaRousseau

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/112934/contact-list-functionality-in-forms

I see that this issue have been posted almost a year ago and it's still don't work. Any idea when it will be available ? Very blocking my use of forms. Tx !

NickyC

I agree with it blocking the use of forms. This is also causing extra work for the person who creates the forms (the few we do use). Every time a new person is hired, or a person is now using Smartsheet, the person must manually add them. This is quite cumbersome and often someone's name is still missing.

kmcclaran97

Please add the ability to use the contact in forms the same way you can with a sheet. When you start typing a name on a sheet the person pops up and you can run automation. When doing this on a form it doesn't allow this. Pretty easy fix that I have found multiple requests for this dating back 5 years.

MitchM

To everyone that has commented and shares the same frustration that I shared from my original post on 11/10/23, I believe I have a solution that will work for most of us based on an engagement I recently had with a Smartsheet Implementation Specialist.

The solution is as follows:

1. Create a 'Contact List' column within your sheet that is based on user/submitter e-mail address. Name it based upon your specific need. Example- Requester E-mail, Submitter E-mail, etc.
2. Within the Form, make this a required submission. Note- you may want to add help text explaining to use their work e-mail address.
3. Set up your automation based on the Contact List column you added as explained in #1 above.

The work e-mail address that your team members submit will now be entered as a 'Contact List' column. Now you can successfully set up automations based on the Contact List column. I hope this helps some of you that have commented on these post. Please add a comment to advise if this worked for you.

LyndaRousseau

@MitchM Thanks for your suggestion ! It's a great idea if the information you want to gatter is about the person submitting it. But here, I want to use it to enter information about ANOTHER person than the one signed in completing the form. And on top of all that, I want to be able to enter more than one name (exemple: list of person enrolled in a class). So it's not working. I have found some work around, but it's still disappointing not to be able to fully use the functionnaly of SMARTSHEET as it is supposed to work.

Thanks anyway ! :)

Have great day ! :)

dadkins

We use forms a lot, but one of the biggest barriers of entry to using them is constantly having to update the form to add new staff to the name selection columns so people using the form have the updated options.

We upload the contacts in the System Account and can select their name from the Contact List drop-down when looking at the sheet but that functionality doesn't carry over in the forms. You can only select the options you directly put in the column or write-in a name (which doesn't connect with your entry for that staff member).

We pull data from numerous sheets for the same contact and this is pretty laborious. It means adding the entire staff list to each and every different form column over numerous sheets. Especially with Smartsheet not having a very intuitive way to add names to a column selection, this makes the experience tedious and the experience poor as inevitably someone gets missed (to non-tech/admin users, makes a harder to sell to my client on why they should use Smartsheets).

This and the difficulty of easy bulk adding people to column is one of the pieces of functionality that at times is game-breaking and truthfully feels overlooked.

(Other solutions would be just to make it easier to add people to a Contact List Column. Bulk drop or similar. Currently you have to select individually by typing their name or scrolling down the list for each one and then repeat for each column on each sheet. No "click all that apply" or even having the names of those you've already chosen disappear on the list. You have to scroll past every previous person. Fine for 5-10 names but time-consuming for 100+ contacts).