Use Cases: Automation to Lock Row

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.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

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)

CleanShot 2019-09-29 at 22.40.43@2x.png

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!

Sign in to join the conversation!

Quick Links

Trending discussions

Document filtered by form responses
I've created a Smartsheets form. When someone submits the form, I want them to automatically be emailed a document that has resources and links, but the document is filtered to only show the content that corresponds with what they selected in the form. Is something like this possible? What types of documents or automations…
Form stopped working after upgrade
I have a sheet that I created in a previous version, and it had a form. I was recently upgraded to a newer version and now my form is not working. I created a new form for the sheet, and it is giving me an error also. Does anyone know what I can do to fix this? The error says Form Unavailable. Sorry, the form you're trying…
Getting Error About Emulated Environments
Hi, I have read the post from 8/21/25. I am still getting the same error. I am setting up a new device and just download the latest version as of 9/5/25. I am using a Eunivon Smart White Board for touchscreen capability. It is running Android 14. Any help would be appreciated.