Sharing folders & sheets within a Workspace

jb@59069

I've been searching the Community and cannot find anything that addresses yet another multi-year old request.

Individual sharing permissions for folders and/or sheets within a workspace.

I understand that creating or moving a sheet into a workspace will automatically assign the workspace shares to the sheet. Fine. But there should be the option to remove users from an individual folder or sheet once within the workspace.

This is ridiculous that we cannot have more macro level control over who sees what within a workspace.

Workspaces are very valuable to the way we work within Smartsheet, but not providing more control on manipulating who is shared to specific items within a workspace is anything but Smart.

BTW - this new UX is still horrible and creates much more work.

Nicole Tellez

Actually JB, you are making this way more difficult than it should be.  Only share the Workspace to those that you want to see all data within.  Share each sheet (within a Workspace) to whomever needs to see it.  You don't have to have Workspace permissions to if you have sheet permissions. If they want to organize their sheets into folders, they can do so.  If they don't, then no biggie.  

tsisson86006

@Nicole.  Your workaround is really not feasible under many circumstances.  In my case, we have individual Project Workspaces set up for each customer project.  Those workspaces are intended for both Internal as well as external (customer) access and collaboration.  We add +100 new customers annually, each with more than 30 sheets per project and only 20 to be shared with the customer externally. So in your example, I have to send "20" individual sharing invites to the customer teams so they can see only the ones in the workspace we want them too.  So to insure the customer only has access to the sheets, reports and dashboards intended, they get bombarded with 20 emails to accept the share(s).  

It "could" work if it were possible to select all of the sheets to share at one time, and then share all 20 with one email.  Still not a great solution, but at least workable.  When does Smartsheets plan to address this issue? 

I, and my team, are working to champion setting up a multi-thousand dollar account with Smartsheets as an enterprise solution, and this one issue is an absolute show stopper for us. 

 

tsisson86006

Is there an update on the possibility of getting this functionality added?  See my post above..  

 

Thanks... 

Andrée Starå

Hi,

What I sometimes do in my client solutions where the client has a similar need as yours, is to use two Workspaces, one internal and one external.

Would that work/help?

Have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

tsisson86006

Thanks for the feedback... 

Unfortunately that would be a last resort.  We are adding more than 100 clients to the system annually and it would then require double the workspaces to manage.  

Currently, I'm avoiding the issue by a) Creating the customer workspace.  Then b) Creating the Project Team Group and sharing the group to the individual sheets and dashboard I want them to have access too.  Then finally c) Adding the customer's team to the group.  

This works but we have to be careful we don't accidentally share the whole workspace.  At +100 new customers a year, the likelihood of one of our PM's doing it incorrectly is going to happen.   

Ideally, Folder Level permissions would work much more consistently and can be done programmatically when I use the API to build out the workspaces. 

Andrée Starå

Happy to help!

Have you thought about using the premium add-on, Control Center?

Please submit an Enhancement Request when you have a moment to have your vote added

Best,

Andrée





tsisson86006

We are looking at Control Center, but it's in the hands of our Executive team.  It's not going to happen in the near term.  

I'll submit an Enhancement Request... 

Thanks for your help. 

 

Andrée Starå

Happy to help!

It can take some time to decide because it's not a small investment. But for the value, it delivers it's affordable.

Best,

Andrée

NavyPilot

So this needs to be revisited. Because I share a workspace does not mean I want to share everything in that workspace with an individual.

Say I have projects A, B and C in Workspace 1.

I share Workspace 1 with Joe as "Editor - Can Share" because the majority of projects in there I want him to have access to. I then change his share level to commenter in ONE worksheet in project C and I get the message doing this will change his sharing for the workspace? That's not how inherited permissions work in the real world and is a problem with Smartsheet.