True Auto Saving?

I understand that 'auto-saving' occurs after a period of inactivity and when I switch sheets. Is it possible to have the sheet auto save after every change, or after a set amount of time (like 10 minutes), instead of reminding me every 10 minutes that I haven't saved? I've been working for a couple of hours and the every 10 minutes things is pretty annoting.

Thanks!

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C Wood

As a GoogleDocs user, I find the SmartSheet Cloud solution a bit kludgy. In just a few minutes of testing with and account and 1 collaborator logged in, I have been able to get the sheets un-synchronized to the point where edits are lost. The latency from an edit to notification of collaborators is over 1 minute, and the "refresh" notification goes away quickly, and I don't see a change in the collaborator tab to show me that a refresh is needed, and the refresh command is 1 level down in the sheet actions. It should be a BIG RED button that flashes if your collaborators have made a change. The training videos don't address this problem at all (intentional blind eye?).

My workaround is to tell my collaborators to hit Ctrl-S after edits and to refresh frequently.

Any tips will be appreciated.

Doug Willems

Hi C Wood.

I totally agree... We have just signed up for a month to test Smartsheets. Currently we are finding that the sheets do not update immediately like they do in Google Doc's. I have read the help documentation on this and it seems that the way Smartsheets operates is:

1) A save is required by the person editing - and

2) then an update by the others collaborating on that sheet.

This seems very archaic in terms of on-line spreadsheet sharing.

Another Management Application "Gantter" also requires a save - however at least with this program the sheet does not require a manual refresh as well - this happens automatically within 1 to 3 seconds of the change occurring.

As you can imagine if we have 6 people using a single sheet - all with the ability to edit then the process of constantly saving and refreshing gets logistically impractical.

Before we proceed with Smartsheets, we really need to know if this is something that can be changed or will be changed in the very near future.

So far everything in Smartsheets looks perfect for our requirements

I need feedback on this ASAP since we need to implement a task Management system very quickly

Thanks

C Wood

OK Doug. Safety tip to SmartSheet users- "be careful during truly simultaneous, high intensity, editting sessions - edits may be lost due to missed synchronization. Verify that your edits stayed."

Travis

Hi everyone - thanks for posting and for providing your feedback! Currently, Smartsheet supports two types of autosaving - upon closing a sheet and after a set time of inactivity. I understand you are looking for a Google Doc style of autosaving and I will submit your suggestion to our Product team.

It is not necessary to refresh your sheet after each collaborate makes a change by clicking the refresh button. As a quicker process, press CTRL + S (CMD + S on a Mac) on your keyboard to save your sheet (saving will also refresh and will keep your place in the sheet). Keep an eye out for the banner prompting you to refresh and notice the icon on the sheet's tab which indicates if changes have been made:

Screen Shot 2015-08-17 at 9.58.36 AM.png

Jamison

What about my original suggestion of allowing an "auto save" event to occur after a set time without notifying the user?

Travis

Jamison, the auto-save feature will save the sheet after a set time of inactivity without notifying the user. You can enable this by going to Account > Personal Settings > Settings.

Doug Willems

Hi Travis, thanks for your reply,

I understand the multi user icon, popups and refresh icon are used to provide an indication that someone has made changes to the sheet. However in practice this is no where near as practical as an auto update. It relies on all collaborators constantly monitoring these signs and then constantly refreshing their sheet. We have used Google docs for a long time and the collaboration works very well on this because it is all automatic.

Perhaps a consideration to give this as an option in the setup - i.e. either auto-update on non auto-update?

Thanks

Doug

Jamison

Travis - Thank you.

I understand that part.. What I want is for it to save even if it hasn't been inactive. I don't know what the threshold for 'activity' is, but I never seem to hit it as I am working. I get notified every ten minutes to save my work. I want to avoid that.

C Wood

Apparently, the Google Realtime API is an interface that implemments the realtime collaboration on GoogleDrive. Since Smartsheet data resides on the Smartsheet server, they must create a similar API for their server. This might be harder than allowing the Smartsheet to live on GoogleDocs and using the API.

I am using a mind-mapping software called MindMup. The creators also seemed to have trouble with the Google Realtime API, but they fixed it.

Copied from the Gantter.com website;

About Google Drive Realtime API:
Google Drive lets users create Docs, Sheets, and Slides, collaborate on them in realtime, and have their changes saved instantly and automatically. With the new Google Drive Realtime API, you can now easily add the same realtime collaboration that powers Google Drive to your own apps. This new API handles network communication, storage, presence, conflict resolution, and other collaborative details so you can focus on building great apps

MissNikkiShell

Here is what I heard about AutoSave:

Autosave - Its on the road map to get the auto-save feature to work when your in idle or not. However, we don't have a timeline

It's one of those little omissions that dilutes the ability to distinguish Smartsheet from other similar tools. If the user is doing version control in his head, we're effectively back to square one. It looks, from the posting above, that Gantter has this matter resolved. I'll check it out to see. I have >50 collaborators on my project, so it will be crucial to have something that addresses this! Thanks for the suggestion!

Joel

I was using smartsheet and i really loved it, till one time i lost about 5 minutes of my work and i switched to google doc

smartsheet is much better than google doc, but this is a critical feature to auto save

i just can't understand why there are not giving the option to save automatically after a change was made

Mike M

I just wanted to drop in and say I'm sorely disappointed that a year later and it seems smartsheet is still no closer to realtime collaboration. The touted "multi-user collaboration" features that drew me to try smartsheets in the first place are no better than an MS Project file on a shared drive. In this day and age, to say your web based prodcut has multi-user collaboration features should be no less than realtime collaboration. The save/refresh model is antiquated and has no place in what looks like a great package. Unfortunately I won't be around long enough to see SmartSheets full potential as realtime collaboration is a requirement for our purposes.

I mean even auto save/refresh every minute would be better than what you have. Seems like I could do that with a greasemonkey script (and maybe I will!). While actual realtime a-la google sheets could require significant core changes, it doesn't seem like an autosave feature would be that hard to do. Certianly not a yearlong project.

I'll check back next year.

Just Jean

Agree with Mike M. We will probably leave Smartsheet because of this.

Mike Wilday

We desperately need this functionality. As a remote member of a team whenever I develop smartsheet users collaborating are required to reload to see any changes I make. People want to see realtime results. Getting this functionality would be essential for a number of users.

OJ93

Here we are 1 months away from 2018 and this was originally raised in 2015. Please can someone from Smartsheets honestly tell me (and the rest of the Smartsheet community) if this feature is going to be implemented?