Changing ownership makes Chart Widgets turn to Missing Source

Dan Seidler

As the Smartsheet Admin, I create most of the Sheets, Reports, and Dashboards for the Executive team.  When we transfer ownership of all Sheets, Reports, and Dashboards to the Executives, their Dashboard Chart Widgets all state "Source Missing".

Smartsheet's Help Desk provided this response:  "... you may need to transfer ownership of some additional items, or remain as an admin on the dashboard."  I have verified that all items have been transferred to the appropriate Executive, and still... "Source Missing".

Since the Executive team works with confidential information, I cannot remain the Admin of these Smartsheet items.  Please advise.

Shaine Greenwood

Hi Dan—

Try having the new owner edit one of the dashboards and double-click on that chart widget with the missing source message and reselect the source sheet.

If that doesn't work, please reply back that email that you've gotten from our Support team and let them know that you're still seeing the error despite transferring ownership of everything to the right people.

Dan Seidler

Hi Shaine,

I recently did a Bulk Transfer of everything I have created to the President.  This did not provide different results.  I also have 2 Smartsheet Support tickets pending (one was created by a Sales Development Rep after he called me).

I'll try to schedule some time with him and try your suggestion.  If this is the only way to make this work, it will take a lot of time away from him (these Dashboards are metric & chart heavy).

Thanks,

Dan

 

Dan Seidler

Hi Shaine,

I tried your suggestion and it worked!  It appears the Report & Chart Widgets are the only ones that do not work correctly; when removing my Admin access.  The Metric Widget appears to retain its source.

I'll have to recreate all Report & Chart Widgets on each of the Dashboards using our President's login.

Thanks again!

 - Dan

Shaine Greenwood

Although it's a bit of extra work to have to do (boo!) I'm glad that it worked and you can get your dashboards working again (yay!)

Kayla

Providing an update here for anyone else that has/does experience this issue. Per Smartsheet Support, this is expected behavior. It's extremely time consuming and frustrating to have to rebuild widgets or go into each Dashboard and into each widget to take ownership of it. There is turnover in EVERY organization that utilizes Smartsheet. How they have a platform that limits this type of change is mind-blowing.

But as of May 2022, there is no solution, and there doesn't seem to be any concern for it.

Edward Sheaf

Also, be careful if you have Viewer Mode set to Last Widget Editor. You can transfer the ownership of the dashboard and respective sheets/reports, but if this is switched on and that previous editor no longer exists or has privileges changed it will break the view.

From experience :-)

Nick Sor

Hello,

I recently had ownership of many dashboards transferred to me and I am experiencing the same issue with all of the charts being broken with no source data. Is there any way to view a previous version of the dashboard or view the intended source sheet of the charts so I can try and replicate what they used to look like?