Using a homeless "By Name List" and setting proper permissions

Jon Magee - Home for Good

I work for United Way and we are currently incharge of managing our communities homeless "By Name Lists".  In a nutshell, these are lists of current homeless people in our community, and is a way for agencies that provide housing to work together in helping people get housed.

 

Also, because we're a non-profit, we only have the funds to do the "Individual" plan.

 

I am the only one with admin rights, and we have everyone set-up as editors.

 

We have the sheets set-up with locked columns, because we need to make sure the data is not tampered with, but allow people to leave comments on the progress of the homeless people they are working with.

 

Sometimes the info in the cells needs to change though, such as if an agency finds out an updated phone number for one of the homeless people.  I was hoping we could use the Update Request for situations like this, but because the columns are locked, we can't edit them from the email notification. 

 

To sum up my question, what's the best way where we can share a sheet, but not allow the people it's shared to, to edit it, but still let us know when updates need to take place?

Jeremy Myers

I would address this as the need for a 2nd sheet and linked Smartsheet form as follows:

 

1.  You need to create another sheet as an image of your orginal so you will have the same column names and etc.  Open the existing sheet, <save as new>.  

 

Turn on the <highlight changes> gizmo for the new sheet w the below settings.

 

Tim Meeks

Jon,

 

Great work you are doing there at UW. Keep it up!

 

I like Jeremy's solution...especially if you have the bandwidth to manage the row transfer between sheets.

 

Another thoght would be to have the users submit updated data using a webform into the original sheet.  The data can be sent either to the bottom or top of the sheet. 

Then you can move the new row below/above the row containing the original data and compare the changes and update.

 

And third thought would be to use the original sheet as you currently are. 

Add a column called "Updates".  And allow the users to enter updated information in the "Update" column.  Someone would then review and copy the updated data into the appropriate cell.

 

Hope that helps!

 

tim

Jeremy Myers

Tim,

 

Thanks for the elaboration!  Couple of angles I had not considered and sounds workable for Jon at UW.

 

jeremy

Benjamin Walker

Jon,

 

Could you leave all of the columns locked and have people use the Comments feature to let you know when updates are needed? Using the ocmments tab on the bottom of the sheet or Highlight Changes you could easily see the most recent action items.

 

Unfortunately it would take some housekeeping to go in and manually update the information, but it would ultimately keep the information managed by a single person

 

 

 

Jon Magee - Home for Good

Thanks for all the suggestions!!  We just started using Smartsheets, and this is my first question, so it's great to see what an active community this is.

 

Sometimes it's the simple ideas that are overlooked, and Tim Meeks, your idea with the adding an unlocked column called "Updates" is going to work beatifully.  It's straight forward, easy to implement, and easy on the end user and admin.  I never would of thought of it though! 

 

Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to reply.  It means a lot

Tim Meeks

Jon,

 

You are very welcome!  I concur on your comments about the community helping each other.  Actually, it was Jeremy's original solution that helped me think of my solution..  it helps to read other's ideas and then build on them.

 

So thanks Jon and thanks Jeremy!

J. Craig Williams

Jon Magee -

 

How many sheets do you expect to need?

 

If your org is http://homeforgoodla.org/, you will likely run into a row limit problem (5000).

 

Please contact me at 

craig.williams@ronin-global.com 

 

Craig

 

Jon Magee - Home for Good

Just one sheet actually, I work for Home for Good of the United Way in Columbus, Ga.  Also, we're just focusing right now on Homeless Veterans and those Chronically Homeless, so the list will not be gigantic. 

J. Craig Williams

Jon.

 

That's good to know.

 

Please contact me anyway.

 

Craig