Viewer access and underlying sheet/report permissions for published dashboards

I have a dashboard that includes several reports and chart widgets. Each widget is set to display from the user's own perspective, with filters in the underlying reports showing data unique to that user.

If someone has Viewer permissions to the dashboard, and the dashboard is published with access control set to “only available to users who are shared to the item,” will they be able to see all the widgets as intended? OR do I still need to share each underlying sheet and report with them directly?

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Naeem Ejaz

Yes — you still need to share each underlying sheet and/or report with them directly (at least Viewer level), in addition to sharing the dashboard.

Or you can choose below option if you don't want to share each item:

Christopher S

I set the dashboard access to “Available to anyone with the link,” but it didn’t work as expected.

Here’s what happened:

The user was able to view the dashboard, but the reports/widgets were not visible.
I granted the user access to the report/widget, which made them visible—but no data was populating.
Since the reports are fed by an underlying sheet, I granted the user access to that sheet.
At that point, the report/widget displayed correctly on the dashboard.

The issue is—I don’t want to grant access to the underlying sheet.

Is there a way to allow users to view the published dashboard and its reports/widgets without needing access to the underlying sheets? I thought the "Published Dashboard" setting would make that possible. Am I missing something?

jmyzk_cloudsmart_jp

Hi @Christopher S

I've created the following dashboard, which may meet your needs.

https://app.smartsheet.com/b/publish?EQBCT=4e8bb9ea72f247598452088feb74d915 (From this, you can experiment with how this solution works. A Smartsheet login is required to access the forms. Your email is hidden from the public for privacy reasons in the actual published dashboard. )

Set up

Forms

The forms in the dashboard require a Smartsheet login to identify the user who inputs the form.

Form Input based 'Current User Filter'

The following formula gets the latest input, which is the last person who entered the left form in the published dashboard.

=MAX([Row ID]:[Row ID]) = [Row ID]@row

Or, you could simply set the form to add a new row at the top.

Published Dashboard Base Sheet

In the Sheet Summary, I put the 'Current User' field with the following formula.

=INDEX(COLLECT({Current User Filter : Created By}, {Current User Filter : Latest}, true), 1)

The ranges, of course, refer to the 'Created By' and 'Latest' columns in the above sheet.

Report Setup

Filter with the 'Current User' checkbox column in the above sheet.

In this case, to answer Christopher's question, I set the Dashboard available to anyone with the link.

For practical usage, I would choose the other option to protect security.

If you are on the Enterprise plan, you can select the third option, which enables users outside of your organization, for example, your vendor or your volunteer, to view their items.

Note: The user can also view items submitted by previous form input users before entering the first form. So, be careful when showing sensitive items in the report or dashboard.

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