Why doesnt my assign to list match my smartsheet contacts that I spent a lot of time setting up?

Wayne Lawson

Why doesn't my "assign to" list match my "my smartsheet contacts" that I spent a lot of time setting up?

Travis

Hello Wayne, thanks for the post! "My Smartsheet Contacts" is your personal address book and will not affect the name a user sets for their own account. When you assign tasks to users, the name you see is the name that is set for that users Smartsheet account (set by the user by going to Account > Personal Settings > Profile).  An example I like to give to help illustrate this is a cell phone plan. Your colleagues name is on their cell phone account however they set it up when they created their account, but you can add them to your phone's address book as any name you would like. Changing the name in your phones address book will not affect their name on their account. 

 

User's can change the name on their account by going to Account > Personal Settings > Profile or SysAdmins on Team and Enterprise accounts can change a users name by right clicking on their name under User Management and selecting Edit User.

 

Let me know if you have any questions about this. 

Tim Meeks

Wayne,

 

To elaborate on Travis' answer, and based on your message to me via LinkedIn, your question is in regards to why Contacts and Groups are NOT the same list.

I'll attempt to answer and let Travis confirm.

 

Per Travis' comment, Contacts are like an Address book, Groups are essentially an email distribution list and the Assigned To is a dropdown list created within a cell of the sheet.

 

Both Groups and Assigned To pull from the Smartsheet Contacts, however, the Groups and Assigned To aren't connected and serve different purposes.

 

Here's more about groups: 

From here, http://help.smartsheet.com/customer/portal/articles/1554165-managing-groups-team-enterprise-only-

 

And details on  Assigned To: here: http://help.smartsheet.com/customer/portal/articles/518335-assigning-people-to-a-task

 

Maybe an added feature of SS would be to have the ability to create Groups and have those Groups be able to be selected or used in the Assigned To as an individual resource.

 

Tim

Travis

Thats all correct Tim.  Just one thing to add, Groups and Assigned To pull from My Smartsheet Contacts AND User Management. 

 

Assigning multiple users to a task (or groups) is a popular request and is something we are looking into but we dont have any near term plans to implement it. 

 

Wayne, does this help answer your question? 

Lola

Can I edit names so the dropdown when I am "assigning to" in a cell is not that long with some people twice (see screenshot).

Right now for example, my dropdown shows users that have edit their names so we see smae people/emails twice. They are not in My Contacts, as you explained, so I cannot find where to change them, delete them.

 

Any advice?

 

Thanks.

Tim Meeks

Lola,

 

See both of Travis' answers above and I think you'll find your answer.  I have a similar issue and the user is both in My Smartsheet Contacts and in User Management with a slight difference in spelling.  If you have an Enterprise account (which we do and I server as Sys Admin), the name is probably also stored in the User Management file that only the Sysm Admin can update.

 

I did confirm in my own contacts that if the user is in both lists, but is spelled the same, they only appear once. I would work with your Sys Admin or go to the user and get the names to match what you have in your SS Contacts.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Tim

Travis

When you click the dropdown list in a Contact List column (just like in your screenshot) you will see a list of users assigned to tasks in that sheet. If you are seeing two names for a user, then its likely BOTH names are used somewhere in the sheet. Locating and removing one of these names will solve this problem.

 

There is possibly another issue, as Tim touched on. If you have a user in your Smartsheet Contact List with one name, but they have a different name set for their account, there may be some cases where you will see both versions. To fix this, you can change your Contact List entry to match their account name or the user can change their account name to match your Contact List entry. 

 

To change the name on your account, go to Account > Personal Settings > Profile.

 

Let me know if you have any questions about this! 

Lola

HI, thanks for your help. I moved all the rows to be assigned to only one user so the others could be deleted, but they are still there in the drop down. My Contacts show only the correct ones, wihtout spelling mistakes. And I do not have an Enterprise account so I cannot go to User Management... I guess I have just to leave with a long drop down?

 

thanks again.

Travis

It is not necessary to have User Management to change the name on an account. The user can go to Account > Personal Settings > Profile to change their name or you can edit your Smartsheet Contacts to match their account name. 

 

I would be happy to take a look at your sheet to see why the two names are appearing, if you would like to share it with me as an Admin:

support+travis@smartsheet.com

 

Travis

Thanks for sharing your sheet! I found that both versions of Jessica's name existed in the sheet, which is why you are seeing two names for her in the drop down list.

 

Most rows spelled her last name Tejeda but one row (row 64) spelled it Tejada. If you remove this name, you should see that name removed from your dropdown list. 

 

The method I used to find the one different name, was to set a filter (right click on the Promotor column header and select Filter column) which only shows rows that contained the incorrect name. 

 

Let me know if you have any additional questions!

Lola

Ooooh that was simple, thanks, sorry that was a stupid mistake from my side. 

 

But my name is still two times, and when I use the filter there is no row under my full name... Is this connected with the fact that my full name is the Account Name? I changed my name in my Profile, deleting my last name, because I do not need my last name in the colum, and I do not want the colum to take too much space. I am not sure if this is enough to change the Account Name or if these two things are even connected.

 

Thanks a lot Travis, I love SmartSheet!

Lola

HI Travis,

 

My sheet is showing the right names now without the repeating onces. It looks exactly as I need it.

 

Thanks a lot for your hel and support!

Travis

Happy to help! 

Lola

Hi Travis, I have a quick questions, is there a way to edit multiple rows at once? for example to select 20 rows and edit who are they assigned to? This sounds like a simple feature but I tried the basics and I could not make it to work. I want to avoid using time to go row by row.

 

Thanks.

Travis

Hi Lola - add the new value to the first cell, then drag fill it down your sheet by single left click and hold the bottom right corner of the text box, then drag down.

Lola

Wow, super easy, just like in a normal spread sheet... I should have known, THANKS!