Hey Smartsheet Community,
I'm hoping someone has cracked this or can confirm it's a current platform gap.
SITUATION:
I have a Smartsheet Dashboard displayed on an unattended TV on a manufacturing production floor. It includes a Timeline widget sourced from a Report, showing a rolling 7-day production schedule grouped by Stage (Batching, Conditioning, Packaging).
EVERYTHING WORKS — EXCEPT ONE THING:
The timeline renders correctly, filters are working (Days from Today > -1 and < 8), grouping is clean, and bars appear on the right dates. When I click "Go to Today," it snaps to today with the blue highlight, and the tasks are displayed as expected.
THE PROBLEM:
When the dashboard first loads, it opens to a day several weeks before today. On an unattended TV with no operator interaction, the screen shows the wrong date range (empty, since the filters are for today + 7 days) until someone manually clicks "Go to Today." That's not an option for a production floor display.
WHAT I'VE ALREADY TRIED:
- Report-level dynamic date filters (confirmed working)
- Expand lanes by default (enabled)
- Verified column mapping for Start Date and End Date
- Forced dashboard refresh
None of these controls the timeline's initial scroll position on load.
QUESTION:
Is there a native setting to set the Timeline widget's scroll position to today when the dashboard loads? Or is this a current platform limitation?
If it's a limitation, I'd love to see this added as a product enhancement — it's a critical gap for anyone using Smartsheet dashboards as unattended operational displays. The "Go to Today" logic already exists; it just needs to fire automatically on load.
Thanks in advance.
