New streamlined creation experience
Hi Community,
We've made several changes that streamline how you create and access content by moving all creation activities to workspaces. This important update brings you a more intuitive environment where content consistently appears in logical locations. Whether you're creating new items, importing files, building pivots, or restoring deleted content, everything will now have a clear home within your workspaces, making collaboration more efficient and reducing time spent searching for information.
Functionality in this release:
- All new items must be created in a workspace, the Sheets folder will no longer support creation.
- The “Create…” button in the top right corner of Browse, (when you have the “Workspaces” or “Sheets” items selected) and right-clicking and selecting “Create” on the Sheets folder file tree item will take you to the create “+” page.
- File > Import will ask you to use the “Add” button in the workspace panel to import items to the workspace. If you don’t have Admin permission, go to the create “+” page and create a new workspace or navigate to a workspace you have Admin permission in.
- Smartsheet Pivot will no longer place new pivots in the Sheets folder.
- When restoring items from the Deleted Items folder, the item will go back to the original workspace (unless the item was deleted from the Sheets folder).
As always, we welcome your feedback. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to your account team.
Best Regards,
The Smartsheet Team
Environments availability: Smartsheet Commercial, EU
Plan availability: Free, Pro, Business, Enterprise
Subscription Model Availability: All
Comments
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This new streamlined creation experience is the worst.🤬. So if we want to test some new ideas before making it live, rather than have it in our private sheets folder, it will now have a new workspace?
If this is your version of streamlining processes, then make it where any new workspace created is automatically given access to all system admins and/or notified via email that a workspace was created in our account by John Smtih, so we can manage the new contents the way we originally intended it to be.
Julie Becker ☠️
Construction Project Engineer / Coordinator & Software Program Oversight Mgr. 😉
Successful People Are Not Gifted; They Just Work Hard, Then Succeed On Purpose‼️
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I stumbled across this new functionality today and came straight to the Community to ask questions which I did in this post. Thank you @Isis Taylor for guiding me to this post!
The inability to move any items into the Sheets directory, or to create new items there, is something I just can't comprehend. It would be great if there was a warning about this. Also it would be helpful if the reason(s) would be explained. Instead of just saying "streamlining", tell us how it's streamlining and better than what we had before. What problem(s) or challenge(s) did this solve for?
I've been introducing and training people on adopting and using Smartsheet for 4 years now. And now there's an update that I don't agree with, frustrates me to pieces, and I will be bombarded with questions and concerns from countless users across my organization because of. How am I supposed to explain this change and convince people (change management style) that it's for the better? Help me help them! At least explain what challenge(s) this solved for, so I can have something to speak to and convince others with.
I don't want more and more workspaces used for testing grounds. I already have workspaces for that in addition to my Sheets directory. It makes my workspace list longer, and it's already insanely long to begin with as they can't even be grouped for organizational benefits.
Will individually shared Sheets still appear in the Sheets directory?
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Adding my downvote to this as well. Maybe there is a strong backend reason on Smartsheet's behalf for this change? From a user experience standpoint, I can see no benefit at all. Moving sheets into workspaces was already trivial. I have added a "sheets" workspace that will not be shared with anyone to replace the default sheets location. This isn't a huge inconvenience, but it is a minor inconvenience with no perceivable benefit to the end user.
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I've submitted the same feedback I left here via the link shared by the OP.
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Did this update also include the removal of creation of additional folders within the main "Sheets" repository?
I agree with the commenters above. Workspaces were created to add more functionality and organization for multiple sheets/reports/etc. that the user wished to share with a specific group of people, or to categorize themselves. Now, users are unable to create a new sheet as a one-off without it immediately requiring and creating a new workspace. The list of workspaces will quickly become cluttered with many of them now being used to house one-off, testing, or other types of sheets.
I echo @Ray Lindstrom that this change without heads up will make it more difficult to teach and train folks within my organization, as I also help out with product adoption in my company. For folks without organizational management skills, their workspaces will soon look like an unmanaged "Documents" library within Windows File Explorer. I like Ray's attitude of "help me help them" as many people within our community want to be excited and share details and positives around updates.
As @Carson Penticuff said above, there is kind of a workaround by creating a general "Sheets" workspace, but I agree with him that this is just an added step without a discernable advantage for the user.
Could there be a scenario where the auto-creation of new workspaces becomes optional? For myself and many other users, a portion of our work is solo and doesn't require collaboration. For items that do, workspaces are a great way to keep everything organized. However, for the items that don't, the general Sheets repository alongside category folders already works well.
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Hi @Will Duplex,
It does include the removal of the ability to create folders within the Sheets directory. That was how I discovered it, and why I posted this question
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@Ray Lindstrom I figured so, but was also hoping that my coffee hadn't kicked in and I was just missing it! 😂
Appreciate the confirmation, hopefully we can at least get the option back.
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It also removes the ability to move sheets currently in a workspace to an existing folder within "sheets".
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I too had to create another dummy folder as @Carson Penticuff mentioned above. And while that is a workaround, I/we are expressing our concerns, issues, frustration, and confusion with the Smartsheets Team, that changing something that no one was complaining about "just because we can" attitude, without warning, shouldnt be rewarded by forcing power users/system admins to come up with another stupid fix (we seem to be doing this ALOT lately each time Smartsheets feels like changing/messing something up).
I have had to create a "Sheets" dummy folder but named it "🚷.Sheets" so its up top like my other one, but again, having to do this along with explaining to all our other users (who can also create things), is now adding more unecessary work for system admins.
Not to mention users who are Provisional Members, can create countless number of items which also adds to more work. Each week i am having to transfer new creations into my name so i can see the rediculous amounts of workspaces created (by accident/purpose), reach out to that user, and either inform them the new process, or just remove it all together.
MORE work for Sys Admins / Lic. Users, does NOT = Streamlining!!! 👎️
Julie Becker ☠️
Construction Project Engineer / Coordinator & Software Program Oversight Mgr. 😉
Successful People Are Not Gifted; They Just Work Hard, Then Succeed On Purpose‼️
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Echoing the comments about how this is counterintuitive for certain work that does not require collaboration. Folders serve a COMPLETELY different functionality than the Workspaces. Many of our users are shared individual sheets for different purposes and folders allow them to keep things organized how they preferred. Having to create a workspace anytime you need to give different permissions will clutter up everything. It absolutely does not do this - "making collaboration more efficient and reducing time spent searching for information"
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Adding my down vote here as well on the "Streamlining" / Removing Sheet Folders and Moving Sheets into Folders. Major frustration of common functionality used for years. Happy to see the community here with recent info on this, I'm hopeful the smartsheet team will help us out here.
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I've just had someone share a file (Sheet/Grid) with me. When I follow the link I was sent, I can access the file.
I then went to my Sheets, and I do not see it there. Because of this I went back to the file via the link. I then clicked 'File > Properties' so I could see where the file was located/stored for me (which could be different than where it's located for the user who shared it to me because, of course, for him it could be in a Workspace instead). Sure enough the file properties shows the location was my "Sheets" directory. I returned to my Sheets directory once again, and to no avail the file was not there.
Where should I be looking in order to find this file again in the future? Certainly you wouldn't expect me to retain a URL or require me to mark it as a "Favorite".
Please help!
Editing to add: The user who shared it with me had the file stored in his Sheets directory, and not in a Workspace.
I am unable to navigate to the file he sent me. Please log a bug/defect if not done already, and keep us posted.
Thank you
Retagging @Sean Carty to ensure my update is not missed.
#DefectLeakage
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This was a frustrating discovery today. I echo those above. My Sheets folder is/was my personal folder for testing things before moving them or implementing them into a live workspace. I'd like to not have more workspaces cluttering my list just because I want to create a test sheet.
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If an end user has view only access to several various sheets, but not the full workspace, how are they supposed to organize all the sheets they have? Some of the end users I have given view access to have almost 100 sheets they are viewing. What are they supposed to do now?😲
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Hi everyone!
Thank you for your patience. I wanted to take a moment to give some context around this release.
We’ve been making a strategic shift toward a more solution focused experience centered around workspaces. This is a step in that direction, but it will not be the only step. Our hope is this direction will be more flexible and ultimately map more closely to how our customers naturally get work done. We will have a much stronger solution with your feedback, so thank you for all the feedback you’re sharing here and in the link in the original post. We’ve shared it with our product team and encourage you to keep it coming.
I've also shared your questions with the product team and have some answers from them that I hope are helpful:
@Julie Becker For testing new ideas, would it be possible to create a workspace dedicated to this purpose where you create new sheets/other elements?
@Ray Lindstrom We've been able to replicate what you are seeing and are actively working on it. Individual sheets will still appear in the sheets folder, however there was a delay in items showing up earlier today. If you are still not seeing them, please reach out to support.
@Will Duplex You'd asked, "could there be a scenario where the auto-creation of new workspaces becomes optional?" Yes. You can choose to create in an existing workspace or create in a new one. If you'd like to add within an existing workspace, navigate to the workspace and click the add button within the workspace panel.
@melissalk If you are looking to create a sheet to test, you can continue to create them within a workspace thats not shared with anyone else.
Again, I want to thank you all for being such dedicated users of Smartsheet. We are grateful that you are taking the time to give us this feedback. Please know that we are paying close attention to how this release is being received.
