Ideas / Help - Editable view for task assigned users

Steven Deem

Hi all,

I'm running into a roadblock here for creating an actionable view of tasks for my team and I'm hoping someone with more experience can either tell me what I'm doing wrong or point me in the right direction.

Currently my team uses a report view of a much larger sheet that is filtered down to what they need for their tasks. The problem is that it is still quite a few columns and can be a pain to have to keep scrolling to the right and back left to view different pieces of their requests. As a result, I've been on a rabbit hole journey attempting to make the overall process more user friendly but each time I've found something that looks like it might work, I run into a limitation either in my knowledge or Smartsheet. Here is what I'm running in to:

1. Dynamic View - looks greats, the View Display section has what I need and the Details Panel scrolls down which is a big plus. However, there is not a way to attach Google Drive files that I can figure out. My team can often attach 2 or 3 decks via Slides and a couple of Sheets per task so adding extra columns to paste a link isn't really helpful and neither is adding a comment as once a task is complete it automates back to the submitter where they would then access the Slides, Docs or Sheets via a Message Only notification. Is there any way to actually attach a Google Drive file to a Dynamic View for a user working a task on it?
2. WorkApp - kind of a Frankenstein mix of the original report they work off of and the above trimmed Dynamic View. They could use the Dynamic View for the info they need then the really trimmed report to actually place a Drive attachment to the row. The issue with this is that when I add the Dynamic View to the WorkApp, on the Assign Page Permissions the only available options are Viewer or Hidden. There is no option to change it if I choose to add it anyway in the Roles.

Can someone please point out where I'm going wrong on this or direct me to a better path? I don't know if it's me or these are limitations of Smartsheet. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Darren Mullen

@Steven Deem Doesn't sound like it's you at all. These are real limitations you run into with Smartsheet… Other than using a custom developed interface you're kind of stuck with what you have.

Now, do all users need reports with all the columns shown? If not, you could create role based reports and stuff those in a workapp for easier navigation.

Another option that may work since Smartsheet is all about workarounds and helper column. Another option would be to create another column that takes data from multiple columns and joins it into a single column that can wrap text to help condense the data.

Steven Deem

Hi @Darren Mullen and thank you for the response, I'm relieved it's not me. What I have is an intake form that multiple parts of our org use for a wide range of submission types. I current have everyone working out of stylized reports that are filtered to only what they need to see/work on and it works ok. With Smartsheet's change in Members and what I gained access to with those changes, I was hoping there might be a better solution.

Some groups have only a few columns in their reports as they don't need a lot of information but there are a decent amount of groups that use a lot more columns and the information in some of those columns can be a couple of paragraphs in nature due to the work type and detail level. This results in either having extra wide columns to try to "shrink" the tallness of the columns when Word Wrap is enabled or turning it off and then having to either hover or click to see the info. That also prevents seeing the info at a glance which is annoying when scanning through something quickly. Dynamic View changed all of that by allowing pertinent info to be displayed in prominently on the landing page then details via the click. That's where the inability to attach Google Drive files gets me as my company (large) lives in collaborative mode primarily using Google.

That's why I reached out for help here hoping there was a different route I could explore. From what it sounds like, we're sorta stuck with what we have, which is a shame.

Darren Mullen

@Steven Deem Yes… Now, it sounds like your company uses Google Workspace? If so… then Appsheet would be a good alternative to Dynamic View. As long as your company has Google Workspace you should have Appsheet included.

Would take a little upfront development, but it is very quick for what you want to do. The Google drive attachment link on Smartsheet would require a small bit of custom tweaking in Appsheet, but it wouldn't be that hard.

This is a super basic example of using Smartsheet and Appsheet together: Happy to discuss further if you're interested in it.

https://youtu.be/xMhwXdlBQck