Access for Non-plan users

I have having an issue with users not on my same company's plan accessing information from a report via a dashboard.

I have a large sheet of projects. That sheet feeds into a report that is "filtered by current user" based on one of the columns that lists specific people related to that project. That report is embedded as a widget in a dashboard.

The dashboard Publish information is set to "Available to anyone with the link".

The report Publish information is set to "Available to anyone with the link".

Everything seems to function as expected for users within my own company (on the dashboard, they see the report filtered to only their own projects).

For users not in my company, when looking at the report itself, they see the report filtered as the last company person that viewed the report. It's not filtering by the current user, it's filtering by the last person that viewed it.

When users not in my company look at the Dashboard, the report widget tells them that the report is not available, and they don't see any portion of the report at all (not even the incorrectly filtered one that they can see if they look at the report directly). The dashboard report widget view is set to "Their own perspective".

I feel like I'm missing a settings somewhere that allows non-plan users to filter by their own login, instead of seeing the last plan user's filter… But I don't see an option for that anywhere on the report.

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Kerry St. Thomas

"Current user" filter doesn't play very nicely for published reports when you go outside your company. It's logical why it wouldn't work… when you take it to the point of absurdity: "ANYONE can view this! Hooray! Y'all have TOTAL access!" is incompatible with "BUT HANG ON NOW; HOLD UP HERE - WHO ARE YOU?!?!" (which is essentially what Current User filtering is).

The only thing I've found to get around this inconsistency (and I won't lie; it gives me a serious case of the huhhh's because of how unscalable it is) is to create an individual report filtering to One Person - not as current user, but as "John Doe" as used in your project - and then publish that report specifically for ol' John here. That might work for one or two people, but it gets unmanageable really quickly as it grows in scope.

Similarly, a Dashboard is technically a window through which you can view other Smartsheet assets. If you use "Link to a Smartsheet item" on your dashboard (e.g. Report widget), the sharing of that report (and therefore the underlying sheet/s) governs how it's viewable. To get around this, you'd need to use a Web Content widget and post the publish URL. Alternatively, you can use Dynamic View (if you have it) as a way to surface data.

Good luck!

Isis Taylor

@Kerry St. Thomas Are published sheets/reports a good work around for no cost viewers that need to edit sheets? I know I can use update requests, dynamic view, etc, but want to make sure I'm aware of all alternatives.

Kerry St. Thomas

Personally, I try to use specific tailored solutions especially with no-cost people outside my company who need to make changes - I want to make others' experience as streamlined as possible, while doing everything possible to maintain the integrity of data. Publishing reports results in the report being Read-Only; publishing sheets can result in confusion (since end users would see the WHOLE sheet - including any helper columns unless you'd hide them… which makes maintenance a bit tough). I prefer to separate the purpose of something I produce into either "View Only" or "Edit Needed" - I use publishing liberally if someone only needs View access, but tend toward the very things you mention when edit access is needed - Dynamic View and update requests. Each has their benefits, and each has their opportunities for improvement.

However you decide to proceed - if your solution works for your specific business use case… call it a win. :)

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