No Owner for a Smartsheet

jcurrier

So it's been five days since I opened a support request with Smartsheet and not one peep from their technical support…so I'll see if the Community is more responsive.

Several staff were deactivated, however, their ownership of Workspaces and Sheets were not reassigned and the Sysadmin that deactivated the accounts doesn't have access to any of the Workspaces or Smartsheets. (Our experience is nearly spot-on for this:

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/137624/customer-support-needed-cannot-transfer-ownership-on-a-deactivated-user

I'm a Plan Asset Admin and we've also tried what is in the url below, but it doesn't work. I was sent a link, but it results in a message that says "you need access". https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2483118-asset-ownership-overview

Otherwise, I've crawled through the Community posts and haven't found a workable, straight-forward solution. Our Tax department uses Progress (Citrix) Sharefile and it's so much easier to manage…between the lack of support, convoluted user and management interface and now the billing debacle, I believe the ultimate solution will be to get our Audit department to migrate to Sharefile. Cheers and thank you in advance for any suggestions.

Genevieve P.

Hi @jcurrier

It's good to hear you are a Plan Asset Admin as that's what you'll need to gain access to the sheets!

Here's the quote form the article you linked:

Plan Asset Admins can't arbitrarily grant themselves, or anyone else, access to any item. To get access, they need a link to the item, and then they must request access... If the Owner is deactivated and no other user has Admin permissions on that item, the access request redirects to the Plan Asset Admin.

This means that if you have the link to the sheet and you're seeing the "You need access" page, you can then request access to then approve your own request!

Let me know if clicking the blue "Request Access" button has resolved this for you.

Cheers,
Genevieve

jcurrier

Thank you for the response, Geneviere, however, we did try that and when I received and clicked on the link to the sheet, this is what resulted in Smartsheet:

Unfortunately, I do not get a Request Access button.

Genevieve P.

Hi @jcurrier

Is it possible the URL you were given is to a Workspace Collection, not to an individual Sheet? Collections do not currently have a way of requesting access.

Sheet URLs will say "Sheet" in them:
https://app.smartsheet.com/sheets/xxxx

A sheet within a collection (grouping of items) will have this URL path:
https://app.smartsheet.com/r/collection/xxx

Whoever provided you with the link to the Collection should be able to share you to that collection instead, or they can navigate directly to the item:

I would look to be shared to the Workspace overall, instead of the individual item. As a System Admin you can download a Sheet Access Report. The alternate version of the Sheet Access Report identifies the Type of item, so you can filter by Workspace to see all of the Workspaces in your account and who is shared to them (to give you access).

See the FAQ at the bottom of this article for the syntax to translate the IDs into URLs to gain access.

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2483064-sheet-access-published-items-report#toc-generate-a-sheet-access-report

Cheers,
Genevieve

jcurrier

Hello Geneviere - Thank you again for a response. Full disclosure, I administer all of the technology platforms for the company and don't work day-to-day inside of Smartsheet to know the "ins and outs".

The link I was provided is formatted: https//:app.smartsheet.com/workspaces/xxx

Based on your information, this isn't a valid link for the intended purpose.

I'll need to go back to one of the remaining staff who has access and get an updated (correct) link.

I did download a sheet access report and it appears to give me listing of who has access to a sheet, but not the Workspace as a whole. I'll need to see if I missed something in generating the report.

Thank you!

(EDIT: Both of the staff I need to work with for a new link are not available until tomorrow afternoon…a 19 hour wait from the timestamp on this comment.)

jcurrier

Thank you for your efforts, Genevieve.

It appears the solution to address the initial issue is to create another Workspace with a name similar to the Workspace with no Owner…and then right-click on the Sheet in the Workspace with no Owner and select Save as New…then save the Sheet to the new Workspace. To avoid confusion, the Sheet in the original Workspace is deleted. This will effectively get the Sheets useable again.

Now to figure out how to gain the needed access to the original Workspace to delete it.

(Edit: Seems this is a known "bug" in Smartsheet going on several months(?) now. Workspaces with no Owners are effectively orphaned and cannot be deleted or have the name edited. I suspect Smartsheet technical support has the ability to apply an Owner to an orphaned Workspace…open a support request if the need is critical.)