Follow a Row

Hi There

I was wondering if there is a way that a collaborator can follow a specific row?

For example, they are not assigned the task, but it is critical that they get notified when there is an update or change to that task. However, they don't want or need to know about changes made elsewhere in the sheet.

Many thanks

Natalie

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Comments

Jeremy Myers

1. If the sheet is not too big and can share it with them and turn on the <highlight updates>

2. You could use the <alerts> function on the bottom of the ribbon. They will be alerted on a set schedule <right now, once per hour, per day, per week>

Cell history is tracked. Wondering if there is any way to read that from a cell and then report to another cell, set conditional formatting etc? Anyone have an idea about that?

Natalie Gorman

Hi Jeremy

Thank you for your response. These people already have access to the sheet. What I was looking for is a real easy way for them to be alerted if something changed on a specific row, just like you may follow a feed, you follow a project, or a task.

The sheet is a tracker for strategic objectives for the business and therefore stretches across the whole organisation, but some individuals will possibly only be interested in one or two rows.

The alert only appears to work on a column basis so that won't give the results that I am trying to achieve. As we are fairly new to Smartsheet as a business and some of these individuals are completely new to it, I am keen to gain their buy-in. Something that brings the information to them rather than them having to look for it would be a real bonus.

Any other possible work arounds would be appreciated, or better still, if this could be a new feature, then it would get my vote.

Natalie

Jeremy Myers

Natalie,

1. Examine the <alerts> function which is on the bottom control ribbon of sheets. This will immediately email notify based on changing conditions to individual or multiple columns, but appears to be on a sheet level basis only. Perhaps that will work for your depending on the number of people involved and the size of the sheet.

2. You can create a filter scheme, one filter for each person involved and then turn on the sheet change alert gadget. You will need a text column to hold the id information for each person involved, you can have multiple people listed to each line, i.e. <john smith, abagail sanchez, etc>. Also create a hidden column using the <auto row number> feature. Your filter would then be <collaborator = "name of collaborato is...r" and row number = <row number or numbmers assigned by system".

You would probably also want to involve the <auto number, modified date> function as a column in some way, perhaps show that to users with conditional formatting based on "time since modified" or similar. You will have to poke around in the functions to see if there is something useful there.

3. You can push a report via <send as attachment>. It will auto send once per day to selected targets. Sorry there is no feature to send upon "sheet update", but it might work to have the thing publish at 6am each day so it's there when people report to work.

I would use the column data mentioned in #2 to configure this report, include everyone who needs to be on the distribution list and downsort the report on their name or id so they can focus on their stuff only. Yes, it is only 1x per day, not real time,, but I have found this to be 1000% better than nothing.

4. Investigate Sights, which is a premium feature. I beleive it can report on a row by row basis and may be just the thing. I have not worked with it yet, so don't have specifics but it looks juicy.

I am probably making this overrly complicated, so would appreciate input from others in the community. as to somehting more elegant. There is always a way!

J. Craig Williams

Reports (Jeremy's #3) is probably the way to go, in my opinion.

Craig

Natalie Gorman

Thank you Jeremy for your suggestions ( and Craig for his vote of confidence in number 3). I am going to give both 2 and 3 a try.

I am really interested in Sights but as I don't have access to this feature it is difficult to know if this is something that would easily solve the issue. If it did then it would be a no brainer and getting buy-in from the business to spend a little extra cash would be a whole lot easier.

I am amazed that row alert is not a feature of Smartsheet and I would like to second my vote above to the Smartsheet developers and say please, please can you add this to your list?!

Many thanks

Natalie

Natalie Gorman

Hi Jeremy/Craig (and anyone else who may view this discussion).

So I have created a report which works beautifully as it pulls from more than one sheet. This is ideal for consolidating and notifying an individual on a scheduled basis of only those matters that are of interest to them. However there is one very frustrating issue and that is that it won't pick up that a comment has been modified. This is one of the key features for us as a business and without this in the report, it loses significant benefits.

So question - is there anyway within the sheet of capturing the fact that a new comment has been updated or edited etc (preferably on an automated basis), so that this can then be used in the report?

For company wide summaries, I have managed to get around this by having a report which I export into excel and then I export the sheet itself into excel to get the comments. I have a macro that runs and pulls out all of those comments that have been updated during the same timeline as the report and I do this once a week - so no big deal.

Unfortunately I neither have the time (nor the expertise) to set something similar up for all staff and kind of defeats the purpose and benefits of SS if I am having to take the information into Excel to achieve the desired results.

At the moment all options appear to fall short of what I am trying to achieve and I am sure I am not alone in the desire for such a feature.

All suggestions appreciated.

Kind regards,

Natalie

J. Craig Williams

Natalie,

Zapier (www.zapier.com) does not have a trigger on a changed comment, only a new one.

In general, it would be difficult to built such a feature using the API, becase you would need to track, somewhere, what the last modified time was an compare to the new one.

However, in your case, where you are giving a specific time frame "show me all since...", then the API code would be fairly easy to implement. Even easier if the number of sheets you were concerned with were imited.

So, it is possible.

Craig

Natalie Gorman

Hi Craig

Thank you for your last comment.

Would I need to purchase Zapier on a team account or would the free version provide me with what I need? I am assuming it would be the former.

many thanks,

Natalie

J. Craig Williams

Natalie,

You'll need the minimum paid version if you need more Zaps (what they call their automation trigger-event set), more transactions (the number of times per month the Zaps run), if you need access to a "Premium" app (there's a list on their website), or if you want to use multi-step step Zaps.

I use the Basic (lowest paid) for a combination of the last two reasons - but your needs may vary.