Lot's of questions on use of a workspace!

Lara Homewood

To summarise, I have a workspace with several sheets, reports and dashboards for this ‘weekly reporting’. Members of the team complete a form of their updates for the week under several headings. The information is then collated (using formulae) into a cell / summary field for each department and is sent to the manager of each department (currently being sent as a report but also set up as a possible update request). The manager will open a new form and copy and paste the information in reviewing the comments, making amends and adding their own information to a separate form (and sheet) to be again collated under the separate headings which is sent to the BU VP who again will make their own review and edits to be shared with the Exec leader. There are also 2 dashboards currently set up for the team members to view their collated data for the week and also one for the managers and above to view each other’s updates. I am hoping to set this up for my VP but will need to set it up and then transfer ownership to her so I do not have access to any confidential data she needs to share with her leader.

 

I currently have two main issues with this system:

1. When collating the text data in a report, the character limit within a cell is restricted thereby limiting the whole system. Is there a way this can be given a bigger limit or derestricted character limit?
2. The only way for a manager to review the information already in a cell (collated with a formula or even by linking to a cell in another sheet) is to copy and paste the report from an excel or update request email into the separate form (and underlying sheet) I have currently set up for them. This would be so much easier for all if the update request allowed them to edit the data in the field within the form. Is there anyone that might be able to help me with this?

Other more minor issues that would be great for some advice is:

1. Help with setting up the separate workspace and then transferring ownership and access rights to my VP
2. Some display settings on the dashboards where I’m finding it very hard to resize columns within a report table adequately enough to show the full data
3. Finding out if there is any way of being able to copy text from a dashboard onto the clipboard.

Ben Goldblatt

Hi @Lara Homewood,

Thank you for your questions! I highly recommend looking into our Pro Desk service for more in-depth coaching on Smartsheet features that can help with what you're looking to accomplish, but I'm happy to offer assistance here as well.

Character Limit: As you found, there's currently a limit of 4,000 characters that can be entered in a cell. I highly recommend Submitting a Product Enhancement Request to see about having this number increased in a future release of the application.

Update Requests: The following fields will appear as read-only in an Update Request form:

• Fields that contain formulas
• Start Dates and Finish Dates with a dependency (the Duration field can be edited)
• Predecessors (this field won't appear in an update request)
• Locked columns

 You may want to also submit a request for the ability to update formula cells via Update Requests.

Transferring Workspace Ownership: Before you can successfully take or transfer ownership of a workspace, you must first make sure that the intended new workspace owner is shared to the workspace and owns all of the items in it. The new owner must be shared to the workspace with Admin-level permissions. For more information on transferring ownership of individual items as well as transferring ownership of an entire workspace, visit the following Help articles from the Learning Center:

• Share Sheets, Reports, and Dashboards
• Transfer Ownership of a Workspace

Feel free to contact the Support Team if you would like one of the Support reps to help walk you through these processes.

Resizing columns in a Report Widget: You may need to look into resizing columns in the report itself or even in the source sheet(s) to see if this helps to show more information in the widget window. Resizing the widget window itself may help too but this is another great question for the Support Team, as they will be able to review what you're working with over a screen share and provide some insight on the options available for getting to your desired layout.

Copying Text from a Dashboard: If you're working with Title or Rich Text widgets on a dashboard that you own or are shared to as an Admin, you could copy the text by:

1. Clicking the "Edit" button in the top left corner
2. Double-clicking on the widget window
3. Selecting the text you wish to copy in the "Preview" section of the Edit window
4. Copying the text, either by right-clicking and selecting Copy or using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C

I'm not seeing a way to copy text directly from other widget types so you may want to submit a request for this functionality as well.

I hope this helps!

Thanks,

Ben

Ben Goldblatt

Hi @Lara Homewood,

Thank you for your questions! I highly recommend looking into our Pro Desk service for more in-depth coaching on Smartsheet features that can help with what you're looking to accomplish, but I'm happy to offer assistance here as well.

Character Limit: As you found, there's currently a limit of 4,000 characters that can be entered in a cell. I highly recommend Submitting a Product Enhancement Request to see about having this number increased in a future release of the application.

Update Requests: The following fields will appear as read-only in an Update Request form:

• Fields that contain formulas
• Start Dates and Finish Dates with a dependency (the Duration field can be edited)
• Predecessors (this field won't appear in an update request)
• Locked columns

 You may want to also submit a request for the ability to update formula cells via Update Requests.

Transferring Workspace Ownership: Before you can successfully take or transfer ownership of a workspace, you must first make sure that the intended new workspace owner is shared to the workspace and owns all of the items in it. The new owner must be shared to the workspace with Admin-level permissions. For more information on transferring ownership of individual items as well as transferring ownership of an entire workspace, visit the following Help articles from the Learning Center:

• Share Sheets, Reports, and Dashboards
• Transfer Ownership of a Workspace

Feel free to contact the Support Team if you would like one of the Support reps to help walk you through these processes.

Resizing columns in a Report Widget: You may need to look into resizing columns in the report itself or even in the source sheet(s) to see if this helps to show more information in the widget window. Resizing the widget window itself may help too but this is another great question for the Support Team, as they will be able to review what you're working with over a screen share and provide some insight on the options available for getting to your desired layout.

Copying Text from a Dashboard: If you're working with Title or Rich Text widgets on a dashboard that you own or are shared to as an Admin, you could copy the text by:

1. Clicking the "Edit" button in the top left corner
2. Double-clicking on the widget window
3. Selecting the text you wish to copy in the "Preview" section of the Edit window
4. Copying the text, either by right-clicking and selecting Copy or using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C

I'm not seeing a way to copy text directly from other widget types so you may want to submit a request for this functionality as well.

I hope this helps!

Thanks,

Ben

Lara Homewood

Ben thank you so much for the time you took to answer these questions!

I actually found a work around for the update edit fields finally by creating separate cells to collate the data on the same sheet and then automating copying the cells to a new sheet which in turn sends update requests to the managers and includes the collated data in an editable format.

I have a call with my assigned customer success manager today and will discuss the other items with him but I will indeed put in a product enhancement request as you suggest.

Thank you again for all your comments and help!