Sharing of reports without sharing the underlying data

Is it possible to share a report to a user, without them having access to the underlying sheet(s)? This means they can only see the entries that are relevant to them? I seem to think that the sheet(s) have to be shared as well as the report, but maybe i'm approaching it the wrong way

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Scott Fuller

When you share a report to someone they will only see the data from sheets that have also been shared to. If your primary goal is for someone to see the data but they don't need to edit it, you can publish the report to them. Publishing a report does not require that the viewer has access to the underlying sheets.

J. Craig Williams

Scott,

Then how does Smartsheet determine what to display in the report?

I had thought reports were personal - a view of what I could see if I have the time to go looking.

Craig

Scott Fuller

Craig,

The published report will display the same results as the person who published it sees in Smartsheet. For example if you are shared to all of the underlying sheets that a report accesses, you can publish that report and the viewers of the report will see all of the same data you would see. Note that the published report is not editable. It is a great way to distribute information without having to share the sheets.

Scott

J. Craig Williams

Thanks Scott!

That's a new one for me.

Craig

Tim Meeks

Scott,

I want to share a report that the user can edit, but I want them to only have VIEW access to the sheet. Which permission level takes priority?

Does the user also have to have Edit capability to edit a cell on the Sheet?

I want vendors to sumbit monthly cost data on about 9 items. We can use a webform, but it would easier if we could give them the ability to enter directly in the sheet but only on certain cells. That got me to thinking if you could use a Report to provide a front end for the user to enter data into without them being able to edit the Sheet.

Another thing that may work is using Cell linking.. I could have a front end sheet that they enter data into that feeds data to a back end sheet.... but I've got over 400 vendors(sheets) to create this for so I want the input process to be less complicated to maintain.

thanks,

Tim

Tim Meeks

Testing here internally. Publishing a Rich version of the sheet that allows the user to edit may be a solution. I wish the Publish Edit version didn't allow the user to DELETE rows... that would be ideal!

J. Craig Williams

Tim,

Monthly updates.

Vendors without access to the sheet.

Have you tried Row Update Requests?

They can be recurring.

I did not see a way to delete the row

I did not know Row Update Requests aren't allowed for Locked rows.

But that makes sense.

Craig

gb82

I guess what I was looking for when I posted originally was the following:

One sheet contains a lot of data, that I dont want everyone to see
A report is great in filtering out just the rows and columns that are applicable to each person (e.g. task list for today, etc)
However to view the data in the report, the user must also be shared to the whole sheet

This defeats the object of the report (in my application) because I only want the user to see what's applicable to them

Hope this is clearer, basically I'm using reports to manage permissions, I suppose, rather that combining data on different sheets, which they are also good at

Scott Fuller

If the users that you are trying to share the data to do not need to edit it you can accomplish what you are trying to do with Publish Report.

Publish report allows you to publish a report to users that do not have access to the underlying sheet data. The users viewing the published report will see exactely what the creator of the report could see.

gb82

scott, thanks - I'll be looking into this

Mike Zeinstra

I want to follow up on this thread. We have a master data sheet and want to send reports to the various work groups. If I share the report, I have to share the sheet with it which means they can see other work groups data. This is not ideal.

If I send the report as an attachment, the only problem with that is that they cannot see any of the attachments that were provided initially to those rows. The only feature that seems to do that is either by Sharing the report or Exporting the file.

Any suggestions other than publishing the reports?

J. Craig Williams

Depending on the size of the Sheet and how often it changes structure, Links to a different Sheet are an option.

Craig

gb82

Mike, thanks for your comment. This is what I'm looking for. Reckon it needs to be looked at by development ;-)

Jeremiah Horstick

It sounds like what you are talking about is a report that filters data and provisions read/write access to only the filtered data. This would be a great feature.

Yessica

Following.

Are there any updates? I have the same objective.

I want to share Reports to multiple Sales Reps, however I do not want to share the master sheet.

Is this still in development?