Lock Column on Report

Jorge Castilla

I would like Smartsheet to add the ability for an owner/admin to lock a column on a report.

 

Use case:  We have a very complicated process where multiple departments collaborate on a single row with hundreds of columns.  I would like to make a report for each department that contains a mix of columns that they can edit, and columns that they can only view.  

 

Because SS only allows locking columns on a Sheet, I am forced to create a Sheet for each department, with complex linking between departmental Sheets.  If I could lock columns on a report, I could create 1 Sheet with multiple reports, without linking.

J. Craig Williams

I would vote for this.

I have not run into this use case but it makes a lot of sense.

 

Craig

JohnHinkle

While you can only lock columns on a sheet, those rules carry over to a report. Any locked row or column from a sheet will also be locked in the report (you just cannot initiate the lock from the report). 

Jorge Castilla

Hi John,  Yes, I understand.  If you read my use case, I am trying to keep the underlying sheet unlocked, and only lock columns on the report.

J. Craig Williams

John,

 

What Jorge wants is a master sheet and the 1st report to have columns 2-10 locked for editing, the 2nd report to have columns 11-18 locked for editing, and so on.

That's a really neat and useful idea.

 

Craig

JohnHinkle

Right, thanks for the clarifications. Good suggestion.  Then only thing, if the columns in the underlining sheets were unlocked (while being locked in the report), the users could still go into the sheets and edit those columns. 

Jorge Castilla

John,  The Admin/Owner can simply hide the columns on the underlying sheet.  Editors can't unhide 

JohnHinkle

Good point! That would not prevent the editors from viewing the data as they can export the sheet to Excel, then view the data, but if your intention is to prevent them from editing, that would be a good workaround. 

J. Craig Williams

And now we're talking about trust, kind of.

If the Admin/Owner has to hide/unhide all those columns when finished, then that will be a pain. Unless all columns are hidden before the save or if we had that 'view' function to hide / unhide a group of columns at a go.

 

Also useful in this scenario would be a way temporarily disable a report.

That seems to specific a request to be generally acceptable.

Lots of things higher on my list.

 

Craig

Tim McCarthy

This is a great idea. Reports reallly do have very limited functionality (but, this is by design, I suppose).

Furniture27

I would like to see this feature added, but to compliment it, also the ability to hide sheets from users, but still allow them to report on them.

This would negate the trust issues discussed above.