What is the effective approach to Group Management and Contacts

Subash Sitaraman

i would like to have a contact with name.

I need Groups so have to add contacts via Group Management else it won't allow me to add a contact from "My Smartsheet Contacts"

Within Groups, I can either paste all emails or add one by one. The former will not allow names to be added, the latter is manual and painstaking if I have a large number of email/contacts to add.

Any suggestions?

Genevieve P.

Hi Subash,

You note that you can't add a contact from "My Smartsheet Contacts", can I ask why not? Are you receiving a specific error?

You could bulk-import a list of contacts including their names by using a .csv file into your My Smartsheet Contacts section (see the details on how to do this here.)

Then once all of the emails are in your Contacts with their names, you can add them into the group by coping/pasting the emails. This will then auto-populate the name with it, as well, since they're now a contact. (See here.)

Let me know if there's a reason why this won't work for you and I'd be happy to help further.

Cheers,

Genevieve

Subash Sitaraman

Hi Genevieve, I am fully aware of how to import contacts. I did that but was unable to add them to groups later. (See case # 03789641) I believe it is an open bug.

Genevieve P.

Oh yes! My apologies - I forgot about that. Yes, if they don't currently have a Smartsheet account and are in your My Contacts list then there is currently a bug that prevents them from being added to a group.

I suppose you could share them to an item (sheet/report/dashboard) and create an account for them, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend this. At this point it looks like the best way to get both the name/email is to add them in individually.

Subash Sitaraman

So, if I understand you correctly, there is no alternative to adding 50-60 group members individually via group management by entering the name and email - correct? This will also allow me to reference /see them in 'My Smartsheet Contacts"?

Genevieve P.

I've just tested a different way of doing this which might solve your issue (until the bug is fixed).

First just add the emails (copy/paste) to the group without any names. This will add the emails to your My Smartsheet Contacts, you are correct.

Then bulk-import the contact CSV with the exact same emails. This import will update your current My Smartsheet Contacts to now have a name, which will be reflected in the Group as well.

Let me know if this works for you!

Subash Sitaraman

I will try this and let you.. This is a great ideal.