Row Sharing

We use Smartsheet in our IT dept. for a few months now. 13 licensed people at this moment, especially to manage projects/tasks, in EMEA, China and US and we like to expand. Everyone was very enthusiastic in the first weeks, but the biggest problem is: row sharing.

We work with external consultants a lot and we want them to work in one ore multiple reports to update tasks. Since they need access to all the sheets mentioned in the report (including other internal and confidential information) we are forced to create separate sheets for externals with only the rows needed for them. We have to copy/paste row information, dates, hours, duplicate discussions and attachments etc. It consumes a lot of time to keep everything in sync..

I see comments like this often in the Smartsheet Community : how to share certain rows with a few people instead of the complete sheet. (Send Update Request is not user friendly for this..)

Is there any light at the end of this tunnel?

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Comments

Victor van R

I do not completely understand your question. Are they not allowed to see the whole sheet?

1. Creating a sheet for the consultants with the information they are alloed to see and use cell linking to get the information to a master sheet to keep all in sync

Other possible option

2. Using a form to let them update the information in a sheet without them seeing any of the information and periodically send them the information they may see by email.

Does that help?

John Hammond

As Victor suggested, cell linking could be a good option. That way, you can update your source sheets and the destinations sheets will automatically update. Keep in mind destination cells are not editable. It sounds like your clients need to edit the data, correct?

In order to edit data from a sheet, they need to be shared to the sheet. Rather than creating a second sheet where you copy and paste the data and have to keep it synced, you might consider splitting up your sheet to two sheets. One sheet with information the client can see and one sheet with confidential information.

With this method, you wont have to copy and paste and keep things synced. You can even go one step further and cell link the client information from the client sheet, to your confidential sheet.

Rob van Dijk

Hi Victor van R, & John Hammond,

Thanks for helping to find a solution.

'Cel linking' to another sheet for me is a workaround, not a solution. It requires an extra sheet, copy/paste tasks and creating links, I have to create multiple reports to keep an overview of projects for colleagues & management, but most of all: cell linking does not link discussions and attachments! In 'Discussions' the consultant keeps me up to date about the work done, details, answers etc. In the master sheet nobody can see those comments and discussions, (only after a lot of clicks to the 'external sheet').

Suggestion to SmartSheet: introduce 'row sync', where equal columns and discussions/attatchments are always in sync with another sheet.

Creating separate sheets for 1 project (only to serve different external partners) sounds also like a workaround, not as a smart solution. That means I have to create and manage multiple sheets and reports, per project, I have to create links and special reports to keep 1 project togheter. Full project overview is scattered in different reports etc.

Suggestions to Smartsheet: introduce 'share a row' (next to 'share a sheet')

Travis

Hi Rob, more granular and powerful sharing options is something our Product team is looking into for future releases and I will submit your feedback to them to assist in the development!

JOHNSCREENWRITER

It's been about 9 months. Any progress with sharing specific rows and/or columns? Or that everyone knows the email address of everyone shared to the sheet? That is another huge confidentiality issue! Also what about the fact that editors also have the power to DELETE rows and, intentionally or unintentionally, wreak havoc?

Warren Gorowitz

I too would like to know if there has been any progress made on this?I have 10-15 users submitting data on a single sheet and want them to have access to edit just their projects when they want, without having me have to Request an Update.

Kennedy Stomps

Hi-- Thanks for your input on this. We don't currently have an update on partial sheet sharing features, but I've passed along your feedback to our Product team!

kelred

Hello,

I am also looking for partial sheet sharing. It has been 5 months since last comment on this feed. Any updates?

Tracy Delpriore

I am also interested in seeing row sharing. Any updates on when this functionality will be put into place.

Joel

I am also very intreating in row sharing option, would be a huge help

Thanks

sgerhardt14906

I'm very interested as well. I just got an account and would love to send one link to lets say 75 people and they would only see the rows that pertain to them. I would accomplish this by adding contact information for all and make sure to create a contact column type and grant access based on that column.

Does anyone have a work around for this? Trying to avoid creating multiple sheets and using the web forms would be too tedious for our approvers as some have up to 20 or 30 employees to enter data for.

James Squared

I would like to have this feature implemented too.

Being able to get a url for a specific row (basically treat rows as issue tickets) to share in other locations would make Smartsheet much more powerful.

I really hope this happens sooner than later!

Gkaplan

This is the single biggest constraint I have with the Smartsheet solution. I am currently engaged with several clients using the tool and this is preventing me from recommending the solution in several engagements. We need this feature!

ivan.velasco.bravo

Hey,

This is a big issue for us too (I see we're not the only ones).

Also I believe the system should be able to do this as you already have "shared filters", can I suggest to incorporate the ability to share only a specific filter with a collaborator? (so they can't remove that filter or change it)

That would save all of us in this thread a lot of headaches and shouldn't be too complicated to implement from a technical perspective, in the end people is currently able to work simultaneously applying different filters to the sheet, and use filters created by other users... You just need to expand this to allow admins to restrict the view of a collaborator to a specific filter.

Thanks,

NickP

This is a major issue. It makes the program just a big task list which I could do in Outlook with ToDoist. I gave Smartsheets my best effort but the poor features in the Outlook app and this roadblock is making us look at other software solutions.