New navigation questions

JamieRH

I am a long time Smartsheet user and I am disappointed with the changes that came out last week as it has greatly increased the time I spend jus trying to naviagate now! 

1) Has anyone figured out - can you lock the left panel in place? Can you set it to go to home or favorites when you do open it? Mine opens to recently opened which is frustrating.

2) Can it be set to automatically open the tabs in a new browser tab? When I open a new one it just opens in the same tab getting rid of the one I had open. It's also now way to easy to close tabs that I needed open.

 

Christopher Brown

Hi Jamie, you have several of the same questions I do, but have a few tips for you based on things that have helped me. 

• Create a bookmark folder within Chrome (assuming you're using it) and call it something that distinguishes it as Smartsheet materials
• Open several of your most used sheets in separate tabs from the new left nav menu including one tab in your browser dedicated to the home tab navigation (with workspaces visible etc). 
• Bookmark each tab and save them to the folder you just created for your SS materials. 
• Within Chrome settings, be sure to scroll to the bottom and select "Pick up where I left off". This will automatically open your tabs as you had them prior even if your browser closes or your computer is turned off. 

Taking into account the steps above, you can close all the tabs and then just right click your new bookmarks folder and select "Open all" which will automatically also open your Home tab containing all your work. That is the closest I have come to having it "permanently open"

This has helped me quite a bit mimic the layout of the old tab format for what it's worth. Let me know if you have more questions or any of the above isn't clear. 

 

Chris

JamieRH

Thanks Chris for the suggestion. I will give that a try, sounds like a reasonable work-around!

Christopher Brown

I'm afraid a workaround is the best we can hope for at this stage. I hope it's helpful. 

Marcin P

This seems to be the main function of this new layout: build workarounds! ;]

Brad Jones

Just a tip to all, in line with what Christopher already suggested.

There is a Chrome extension called Sidebar+ that will allow you to have a vertical list of tabs and/or bookmarks open and visible at all times.  It works best if you don't use the iframe and instead use it in 'window' mode.

Just as Christopher suggested, you would create a folder of Smarthsheet bookmarks.  Then with the Sidebar+ you can click one button to open every bookmark in that folder.

This is the cleanest workaround I have for this UI "upgrade".  At least until they allow us to pin the sidebar and restore our lost convenience.

Christopher Brown

NIce, thanks Brad! I will look for the extension today! First on my list this morning!

Susan Peck

Hi all,

By putting individual sheets in separate browser windows, have you seen an increase in computer resources being used?  I keep a lot of other sites open in Chrome already and they use a lot of memory. 

I have not yet applied the workaround to Smartsheet because I don't want to see even worse performance on my machine (I use several other memory-intensive applications).  But, I'll try what is suggested here.

This change was a solution looking for a problem and has increased the market for workarounds. We, too, are long-time users (since 2011) and can't see much benefit in any of the last UI/UX changes while issues and feature requests made repeatedly and for years go unaddressed.

susan

JamieRH

Thanks Brad! Will be giving that a try today. 

I am actually contemplating setting up Firefox and having it open all my main sheets when opened. That way I can still use Chrome for my other browser items but open all my frequently used Smartsheet pages at once.