🚨 [Feedback Requested] Would commenting directly on Dashboards help your team? 🚨

Hi all! I'm the PM for Dashboards and I'm exploring adding some Conversations capability to the canvas. This would include -

Letting users leave comments on widgets in a dashboard
Adding an “annotation mode” where you can highlight or draw attention to specific areas of a graph
Possibly enabling approvals right on the dashboard for exec workflows

We noticed that you love commenting on Sheets and Reports, but will it be a useful feature to have on Dashboards?

So I’m asking the community:

Have you ever wished you could comment directly on a dashboard?
Do you take screenshots or write long Slack/Email messages instead?
Would annotations make this better — or just add noise?
Do you feel the need to have a light weight approval mechanism built in to Dashboards to get sign-off from your stakeholders?

No pitch, just trying to validate the need for Conversations on Dashboards. Would love any honest feedback!!

Screenshot 2025-07-14 at 11.47.06 PM.png

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Sing C

Hi @vatsal.shah,

I love that idea. Having sheet-level conversations is such a powerful tool in our org but the benefits are only seen by a small set of users - the nature of working at the level of a project plan or risk log.

Dashboards have a larger audience as they are typically 'status reporting' in nature and, as such, having discussions contained within the flow of the information being consumed and transparent to all viewers elevates the openness of communication.

So often we see users viewing a dashboard then jumping onto Slack or MS Teams and sending a DM to a project manager asking about a particular metric or chart in the dashboard.

This gets my vote!

Antonie B

@vatsal.shah ,

I think this is a great idea, and really the next step in being able to fully collaborate inside of Smartsheet. Would this also be coupled with Insights to provide a theme or action list that can then be used by a PM to use as a possible change log?

In addition, being able to somehow have versions no a dashboard to track this would also be great, to again drive that scalable growth over time!

AdamSYNH

I love this idea, we'd have many uses for the functionality demonstrated in your post/screenshots. We regularly use dashboards as the backdrop for meetings, it would be really helpful to be able to capture comments in those meetings and extract them to use as actions.

Monique Odom Stearn

LOVE the idea of annotations on a dashboard, and I think it would go a long way to getting executives to use dashboards if they could comment directly there!

Ray Lindstrom

This does sound like something that would be very useful. Without even polling them, I already know several teams I support would like and use this functionality.

Thanks for asking!

Paula Grahame

Hi! I saw this post on Reddit and commented there, but I'll add it here also because it's a big one for how we operate.
Yes, I think some level of commenting could be great. I think it depends on what your dashboard is for and if collaboration is part of it. The approval piece is definitely making my ears perk. In our world, there are likely some use cases where we would use a feature like that.

From a deeper extent, though I feel that offering a Whiteboard or Sticky Note widget option would be insanely beneficial. A live editable in the moment space to add a note for the team, share an update, build a collaborative quick view to do list - things like that… In a place where you don't have to click into or search for a separate Smartsheet tracking sheet. I'm talking quick notes to jot down (and include history similar to view cell history… as view widget history - Yes please. That too.)
Now THAT would be a big deal for our space.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

melissa.garcia

I really like the idea of having the ability to have stakeholders or anyone be able to comment or add comments to a Dashboard. I even thought of the idea (and IF POSSIBLE) to be able to turn on/off the comments feature or be able to toggle it off or on, depending on the users or maybe within a certain timeframe? Could it also be only visible to the Admin or Owner of the dashboard, too?

Recently I had to have an internal client review the dashboard I created for his online course tracking and to get his feedback I was able to make a static PDF of the dashboard and add it as a Proof for his review. I gathered his comments and annotations through the Proofing feature to capture what he needed, liked, and what to do away with.

To answer some of your questions in your post here are my thoughts:

Have you ever wished you could comment directly on a dashboard? Maybe once or twice. I do worry that stakeholders can really go rogue with their comments and would open up a door of continuous feedback. I also would not want someone else to see stakeholder comments or feedback thus the ask to have it only visible to the Dashboard Admin or Owners?
Do you take screenshots or write long Slack/Email messages instead? I used Proofing and added a static PDF to gather feedback and explain the why's/how's/and where's.
Would annotations make this better — or just add noise? It will definitely add noise IMO. But can it be contained noise (i.e. the ask of Admin and Owners can be able to view or toggle off and on)?
Do you feel the need to have a lightweight approval mechanism built in to Dashboards to get sign-off from your stakeholders? This would be interesting to see on what this would look like. Would it function similarly as the Proofing is setup for review and approvals? Tell me more!

Isis Taylor

I think this is a great idea and would also appreciate the option to turn allow comments on or off.

Almonto1

I love the idea of dashboard annotations and think this could be a true value add, especially if the ability to see/edit comments can be controlled by permission/ role type per user or user group. My team loves using Smartsheet dashboards to provide information across several different stakeholder groups, so being about to make notes that are only visible to our internal team would be amazing!

Kelly Drake

The biggest thing that is requested of dashboards is the ability to filter dashboards or having hte option to set an automation to email the dashboard at a specified cadence.

We never get the request to add notes or conversations.

Protonsponge

This would be a fantastic feature and I would expect it to increase dashboard engagement with senior leaders, especially if this feature could via mobile devices such as tablets.

Griff D

I agree with the comment that it should be able to be disabled. I see the value to some users, but in my work I am using three chat platforms at a minimum at any given time and this is on top of other communication platforms like emails and phone calls. Smartsheet is currently not one of the three typically and when a comment comes into Smartsheet it often goes unnoticed by me and similarly the rest of the people on my team.

Paul Newcome

While I love the idea in theory, I feel like in practice it could very quickly become entirely too much noise. Especially if you start allowing comments in different areas within a chart or graph. I think at the lowest it would be the widget level, and I would DEFINITELY want the option to turn it on or off for each individual widget.

Things like metrics widgets can change very frequently which makes stored comments irrelevant very quickly. It would be like trying to comment on a metrics sheet. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I frequently build out "tables" in dashboards that consist of title widgets for the vertical and horizontal labels and then metrics widgets to fill the data within. I wouldn't want anyone to be able to comment on any of these widgets at all.

I also frequently use image and title widgets as "buttons", and I wouldn't want users to comment on those either.

I think overall, the only useful comments would simply be at the dashboard level and not even at the widget level.

But really, I agree with @Kelly Drake. I've never heard anyone mention this before as a potential idea let alone as a useful ask. Being able to filter and regularly send are the two biggest requests I have received over the years across all of my clients. In fact, those are the only two dashboard requests I've received from clients. I have a few other thoughts of my own as a builder, but comments has never been one of them.

@vatsal.shah I would be curious what the user interface for the approvals would look like. Right now I just use a report filtered by current user, and that seems to work very well.

Andrée Starå

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/141122/feedback-requested-would-commenting-directly-on-dashboards-help-your-team

Hi Vatsal,

I hope you're well and safe!

Here's my feedback!

1️⃣ I would love to have the ability to have conversations in Dashboards, but I don't see a use case for it on a widget level. With that said, I think it could be excellent to have other options. (see below)

2️⃣ I love the idea of being able to annotate. I think it would be fantastic to have the proofing features (Comment with pin/area/arrow/emoji) in conversations in Dashboards, and, come to think of it, it would be amazing to have them in Sheets and similar too (Being able to comment and selecting a column/cell/area, and more). I would love it for when I develop client solutions, but more importantly, I know that my clients would love it too.

3️⃣ I also love the idea of having approvals in the Dashboards, and I think it would make sense to use the same Proofing structure as mentioned above.

4️⃣ I agree with others that being able to filter and send are the most requested features, together with being able to "Jump" to different sections that I've heard from my clients and the community.

🔢 My suggested prioritization would be. (In this order because of the work efforts)

1️⃣ Jump
2️⃣ Send
3️⃣ Conversations
4️⃣ Annotations/Proofing
5️⃣ Filters

I hope that helps!

Be safe, and have a fantastic day!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Smartsheet Expert Consultant & Partner / CEO @ WORK BOLD

✅ Did I help answer your question/solve the problem? Please support with💡 ⬆️ ❤️, and/or ✅ Answer. This will make it easier for others to find a solution or help answer! I appreciate it, thank you! 🙏

meagans

This capability would be super useful! At least for my team, bullets #1, 2, and 4 are a resounding YES.

Annotations would be so appreciated - but as others have said, the ability to toggle this feature on and off would be ideal.

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