Which Keyboard Symbols are sorted FIRST in Workspace List?

NeilKY

I always put an underscore _ before a workspace name if I want it sorted first in my Workspaces list. (eg. _Workspace1). But what if I wanted to place something before my __Workspace1 workspace, without worrying about the alphabetical order?

Most software will sort things based on symbols then numbers then letters, and the symbols are prioritized by their ASCII number. Examples:

! (33)
" (34)

# (35)

$ (36)
% (37)
& (38)
' (39)
( (40)
) (41)

So a "!" would be before "#" and before "(" and so forth. However, I haven't found this to be true in Smartsheet.

Does anyone have a list of COMMON symbols (Those found on a keyboard) and their sort priority in Smartsheet?

jmyzk_cloudsmart_jp

Great question, @NeilKY !

I ran a test by programmatically creating folders with various keyboard symbols followed by " folder" (e.g., ! folder, @ folder , etc.) inside a single workspace. I chose folders instead of workspaces to avoid cluttering my account with many new workspaces — but I suspect the same sorting rules apply to workspace names as well, since the UI behavior appears consistent.

Smartsheet does not sort folders by ASCII order.

Here’s the observed sort order of some common keyboard symbols in Smartsheet:

Key Observations:

• _ folder does sort first, as expected.
• Characters like -, ,, and ; appear before !, which does not follow ASCII order.
• Smartsheet likely applies a custom internal sort order for symbols, unrelated to standard character codes.

_ - , ; ! ? . ' ( ) [ ] { } @ * / \ & # ` ^ + < = > | ~ $

Tip:
If you want a folder or workspace to appear at the top of the list, try prefixes like _, -, ., or , — they reliably come first based on my test.

Hope this helps others who are fine-tuning their folder/workspace naming conventions!

Sample test code

Detailed Observations:

1. Underscore _ sorts first – this is common in many systems and intentional to allow "top-sorting".
2. Dash -, comma ,, semicolon ; come early, which is unusual (ASCII-wise, ! has a lower value than ,).
3. Paired brackets/quotes are grouped somewhat logically:
   • ' ( ) [ ] { }
4. Math symbols and separators tend to follow:
   • @ * / \ & #
5. Tilde ~ and dollar $ come last, despite $ being ASCII 36 and ~ being 126.

Possible Explanation:

Smartsheet may be using an internal sorting mechanism that:

• Groups characters by type (e.g., punctuation, math, brackets).
• Applies a custom priority table for UI consistency.
• Might ignore ASCII/Unicode and instead flatten non-alphanumerics into a hand-tuned order.

This behavior is not documented publicly, so the only reliable method is empirical testing like the one above.

BTW, the last character is Z.