How to send an Update Request to a non-shared sheet user

John M Lee

Long story short: How do I request an update to someone who does not have access to the source sheet?

Facts:  We have a business development pipeline sheet that is owned and maintained by the implementation team.  We add a new row with each opportunity and have a column of Contact that lists all of our sales people.  We have a date of initial contact column.  The sales people do not have access to the sheet.

Set-up:  I have an Update Request alert that is to be sent to the salesperson in the Contact column every 2 weeks.   We just want them to tell us the status of the account.  

Issue:  The first alert was to be sent to the sales team but instead I received an email saying they were not being notified because they weren't shared to the sheet and my permissions were too restrictive.

Andrée Starå

Hi John,

You must change your Alerts & Actions Permission settings. You'll find them in the Alerts & Actions and click on the cogwheel in the upper right corner.

Hope that helps!

Have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

Pam Grant

Thanks, Andree!

FYI to readers - The title of "Alerts & Actions" has now changed to "Automation".

Choose "Create Workflows" or "Manage Workflows"

Then I was able to see the cogwheel and update my settings.

 

Andrée Starå

Happy to help!

I've attached a screenshot for future readers.

 

BigAl

Hi Andrée,

hope it is ok to "jump into" this old discussion?

Thanks for you detailed description. However it does not seem to work for me. I have the settings as you described in your latest scree shot, however I have an update request where I ask requestors of a demand which came in via a form in the end about written feedback. These requestors do not have access to the sheet as they should not see what is going on internally. Is there any option to ask them for feedback where they have to edit fields in a "Update request" w/o having any access to the sheet. Thanks for your feedback.

Alex

Genevieve P.

Hi @BigAl

Yes, you can send Update Requests to anyone, regardless of whether or not they are shared to the sheet. You can either do this manually or automatically with a workflow. See: Automatically Request Updates on Tasks

You can control what fields are sent out in an Automatic Workflow by selecting those specific columns: Customize the content of your alerts and requests

If selecting the Permissions option that Andrée has pictured doesn't work for you, I would suggest checking in with your System Admin to see if they perhaps disabled this option for your entire account. See: Configure Security Controls for an Enterprise Plan

Cheers,

Genevieve

BigAl

Hi @Genevieve P. ,

thanks so much for your quick reply.

I found the reason after checking also your additional set up information. Each line was locked by an old workflow to avoid any change after the demand (=one line in Smartsheet) was finished by IT. I changed the workflow now to lock the line after the evaluation was done and now it is working as needed ;-).

Thanks again for your help and have a great day. Great communitiy here at Smartsheet!

Best regards from Germany

Alex

Genevieve P.

I'm glad you were able to figure it out! I hope you have a wonderful day as well.