Use Cases: Automation to Lock Row

Cleversheet

I'm taking the Process Solution Certification Exam on Thu 10/3. One of the features to be tested is Lock Row as an automation workflow. I've searched high and low within the Smartsheet Help system (including watching videos I thought could help) but can't find anything more sophisticated than something like, "When everything is completed on a row mark it as locked."

Are there other typical kinds of cases where one would lock a row? It appears Automation can't UNlock a row, so it's not like you could lock it temporarily based on a condition set, and then unlock it automatically when the conditions change. Pretty much looks like a one-way street.

I don't want to flub my certification because I'm unfamiliar with this feature (having never had occasion to use it), but it seems odd Smartsheet would specify Lock Row as a criterion but not have anything in their Help to describe its use cases.

Andrée Starå

Hi,

Here's an excellent resource: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/522077-locking-unlocking-columns-and-rows

One use case is locking a row when someone approves and then unlocks it again if it needs to go another approval round.

Make sense?

Hope that helps!

Have a fantastic weekend and good luck!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

Cleversheet

Missing ingredient is automated UNlocking. 

Andrée Starå

There is automated unlocking as well. (see picture)

Scott Willeke

You can indeed unlock a row in an automated workflow. In addition to the locking a row before or after an approval as mentioned above, another prominent use case is to Unlock a row when a prerequisite work item is completed, or if a phase in a phase-gate process is completed permitting the work items in the next phase to be available for changing.

I've seen people put formulas in the row to reference the status of the prerequisite task or phase so that it triggers the unlock row on the dependent row.

Hope this helps and I'd love to hear more use cases from others!

 

Andrée Starå

Great use-case, Scott!

Thanks!

Cleversheet

Mea culpa. I coulda sworn I was looking at some interface that displayed only a Lock but no Unlock. Thanks for pointing it out, and for the use cases to help me envision taking advantage of this capability. 

Andrée Starå

Happy to help!