Reports and Linking Sheets

Adam Pemberton

Hi all.

 

Right now I have a master sheet I use for recording sales leads, that I then assign to specific people. We have in-house sales reps that I've created reports for - they have access to the master sheet so no problems. The subcontractors however dont have access to the master so Im left to linking sheets - which works...ok...but with the amount of leads we generate it means I'm copying/pasting constantly.

I guess my question is... is there a way I can create reports without sharing the master sheet with my subcontractors? Im fairly new to smartsheet so maybe Im not using it how it should be?

 

Any help appreciated.

Cheers.

Adam

Cameron Blackmon

Hi Adam,

 

Yes!  Reporting is one of the great things about SmartSheet.  All you have to do is simply create a "new report," as opposed to a "new sheet" (like you did when creating your master sheet) and only include the data that you want from your master sheet in your report.  So if you have a column for "subcontractor name" in your master sheet, you can use that as criteria for which rows get included in your new report.  Here is a link to a help page that describes how to use reports in SmartSheet: http://help.smartsheet.com/customer/portal/articles/522214

 

Hope this helps!

Cameron

Alina Anderson

Hi Adam,

 

One option is to publish the report and share the URL with the subcontractors. There is a publish tab at the bottom of the report. Published reports are view only, the subcontractors will not be able to make changes in the report. If you have specific columns you want them to update, you can use update requests from the source sheet. 

Cameron Blackmon

Sorry I misunderstood the question.

Adam Pemberton

I appreciate the input!

However, If I create a report with the purpose of publishing and sharing, when they try to update the report they wont see any data without access to the master sheet right?

 

I'm thinking I may need to re-look at how to properly link sheets.

JohnHinkle

Publishing a report will give users a read only version of the report, with no access to the underlining sheets.  They dont need to be shared to the report or the sheets, just publish the report and give them the published report URL and they will have access.

 

As Alina mentioned, update requests can be used to give users (who are not shared to the sheet) one time (or recurring) editing access to selected columns/rows.

Adam Pemberton

Ah ok, that sounds good. I'll give that a try.
Appreciate the help! Amazing community here.

Thank you!