Edit-ability of a Sheet

aguillot

Is there a way to restrict or grant specific edit permissions with a collaborator? The permission settings under "Editor" are to broad, however, viewer does not have enough permission. 

e.g. I have 10 rows in a sheet that one of the collaborators need to be able to provide a status update as the status changes throughout the project. However, all other rows and cells should have a viewer's permission setting for that person. 

 

Can this be done?

Mike Wilday

You can use the lock in the row or column to prohibit specific columns or rows from being edited by an Editor. Only an admin or shared admin can edit locked rows or columns.

aguillot

Thanks for replying Mike! I looked into this option and it's not going to work in this case. I'ts too time extensive to continuously lock and unlock rows. I'm taking 100s-1000s of rows to be managed. Plus 99% of the permission settings for an "editor" I can't give to some of these collaborators. 

Mike Wilday

This is just a thought, but maybe you could try sending regular update requests to particular rows and provide only the cells they need. I believe you can send update requests to non-smartsheet users, so, even if they were view only they would be able to update the status. Maybe that workflow would work for you. 

Here is more on Update Requests. https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/504779-using-update-requests

aguillot

Is it possible to send an update request once and keep that item open for that that person to go back to and update multiple times without repeatedly sending update requests?

At this point it seems that smartsheet is more of a burden than a solution for what I'm trying to accomplish, however, I really want to try to make it work. 

Mike Wilday

No, its a one-time link. But you could set it up to send automatically every day till complete. Or you could create a report that allows the user to always update it. You'd have to have some identifier to indicate only the rows that you want in the report, but it would allow a user to only see certain rows based on aggregate criteria that you set up. They would have to have editing access on the main sheet, which kind of defeats the point, but at least you send them a report that only shows the columns you want them to update. 

 

aguillot

Unfortunately, I cannot give them editor access since they need access to the entire sheet. The goal isn't to prevent them from seeing things, just to prevent editing and changing things.  Oh well, I'll just have to find another solution outside of smartsheet. 

J. Craig Williams

This is something achievable with careful design. I would need to see the sheet design to offer more advice than that (which is kind of vague and cryptic).

There is also an upcoming release that may be solve this problem. I hope this feature comes in Feb, but it might be later.

Watch the release page for updates.

Craig

Mike Wilday

Craig with the Sneak Peek. I wanted to join the early release program, but alas, it applies to the entire account and users didn't want to have access to early release options without being assured they would remain. We only have a team account.

J. Craig Williams

I don't blame them. 

I am finishing up the delivery of a month long project and the design would be very different if we delayed until after the release. Sometimes, knowledge is a burden.

I told the customer I don't build systems with beta software and they agreed.

Craig