Count Up Timer

Jaison Scott

Hey all. Brand new (3 days) Smart Sheet user. I am working on an exercise with my team and would like to have a running "count up" timer (stop watch if you will) in a dashboard that shows from the time we kicked off to where we are currently Hrs:Min:Sec able to show for about 48 hours. I tried importing a few timers but that didn't work so I am attempting to find new methods.

Thanks for any feedback.

Genevieve P.

Hi Jaison,

Welcome to Smartsheet, and to the online Community!

I haven't personally tried to embed in a count-up timer before into a dashboard... I would suggest looking for a timer with an Embed Code that you can use in a Web Content Widget.

If that doesn't work, you would be able to embed a Youtube Video that has a time (something like THIS one?). Keep in mind with a youtube video you would need to keep the page open and video playing - if you closed the window with the Dashboard it would stop the video & the timer.

Hope that helps!

Cheers,

Genevieve

Jaison Scott

Genevieve,

Thanks for the reply. I haven't been able to find a timer embed code that worked yet (still haven't given up). I found a 24 hr count up clock on YT and put it on there and was super proud of it, until I learned that it didn't show the whole team the same time I was seeing and as you mentioned, stops the video and timer (was crushed :) ). Thanks again.

Genevieve P.

Oh no! I would still be proud of it, it sounds like you're doing a great job getting this all together.

Could you potentially share your screen with the dashboard and timer to the team? That way they could see exactly what you see.

Jaison Scott

There will be about 8 of us in the dashboards together and apart doing different functions so I don't know if that will work very well. Something to consider though. Thanks for the idea.

Paul Newcome

What is the function of the dashboard? Does it contain something that EVERYONE will access?

Would it be feasible to have someone submit a very simple form to "access" the dashboard so that you can track when each person "logs on"?

Here's what I am thinking...

I open a URL to a form and click "Submit". The form is set to load a specific URL after submission which would be the Dashboard's URL.

This form submission would create a new row on the underlying sheet which can have a Created date/time stamp.

We can use formulas to track the difference between the starting date/time stamp and when the last user "logged on" to the dashboard. I know it doesn't EXACTLY do what you would like, but it can get a pretty close amount of time that could be displayed as

"Last Log On: 6/3/20 11:45am

Elapsed Time From Launch: hh:mm:ss"

Then you can have the dashboard set to refresh regularly so that even while YOU are working on it, the timer will update as others "log on".

Does all of that make sense?

Jaison Scott

Paul,

Thanks for the feedback. We are doing a disaster exercise and the "command" dashboard will be where the team conducting the exercise will be able to see a view of pretty much everything happening within the exercise, action items, issues, next updates due, tracking milestones, objectives, completed times, etc.

Some of our objectives have a timer on them so we will be monitoring, noting, and displaying those missed as well as being able to see how far into the exercise we are with the exercise running a full 24 hours and different shifts and teams of controller/evaluators being in at different times or maybe at the same time. The command board will be locked by access to just the command team.

We do have regular refresh which is needed and part of the challenge. I need the clock to keep running for the entire length of the exercise uninterrupted and if we do refresh, timer keeps going.

In terms of the board I am using just about every category of widget that Smart Sheet offers. It is also linked to dozens of other smart sheets, reports, and dashboards.

Hope that helps make it a little more clear.

Paul Newcome

Ok. So the solution I outlined above would NOT be "running". It would only update every time someone views the dashboard.

There is also another way using Zapier, to have it possibly update by the minute, but that may require an amount of "zaps" that would push you into a paid subscription instead of the free version. Would that possibly be an option?