Best practice sharing of links to forms

Chris Ward

Hi

I am ready to share several Smartsheet forms with my entire organisation (and some external consultants) - currently less than a dozen people - but growing quickly. I am currently the only licenced Smartsheet user. I only want to share the links to the forms, not their respective sheets, to the entire organisation.

I am thinking about what might be the best practice regarding sharing the various links to our Smartsheet forms. To date (four months using Smartsheet) I have been focussed on developing administration processes and procedures, but eventually, I expect that we may have forms in all areas of the business. (So, I like that I could create a hierarchy in a sheet to group items.) But for now, my forms include:

* Travel request form, whose sheet is also used for the approval and then tracking booked status and paid status of the flights/hotels/entertainment/other expenses

* Request to add a new speed dial to our phone system, 

* Credit card expenditure request form, whose sheet is also used for approval and then tracking paid status of the expenditure.

I have considered emailing the links - one by one, or in relevant groupings. I suspect those will get lost/deleted/misplaced and I'll be forever resending them. I have considered setting them up as Notes in Outlook and sending those to each employee/new starter... but it will probably be a variation on the above.

So, I am curious as to whether anybody in this community has used a Smartsheet sheet to share their Smartsheet form links to their organisation's (or department's) personnel.

Did it work efficiently for predominantly non-Smartsheet users? Was it intuitive for them or did it require a lot of explaining?

I would appreciate your comments and suggestions. Thank you.

J. Craig Williams

My two primary methods for sharing the links:

1. Sheet Map

- nearly every workspace has its own Sheet Map, which is a collection of links to Sheets, Forms, Reports, and the Workspace itself. By putting them into a Sheet, columns can be added for purpose (why does this need to exist?) and in some extreme cases when it needs to be reviewed or updated (HR Sheets and Forms sometimes fall into this category)

(Also in some cases, there is a Workspace Map to document the Workspaces)

2. Dashboard

- Relatively new to my new project Workspace, it has gotten very good feedback from customers and colleagues, so I will likely be moving some or all of the Sheet Map functionality to Dashboards. The Shortcut Widget is great for this purpose.

Both of those can be published for non-Smartsheet Users, but it depends on what is being shown.

I hope this sparks some ideas.

Craig

 

Chris Ward

Many thanks Craig. 

Nic Cunliffe

Is sheet map a feature or something that you have created please?

 

Love the idea :-)