Accessing a Group Created by a Colleague

My colleague created a large group of contacts in our organization with the intention of using this group for email permissions in Dynamic Views. We are both Group and System administrators on our business account, and I am able to access and edit the group in Group Management, but the issue is that I am not able to access the group in any of our sheets.

Any ideas for solutions to this issue?

Best Answer

  • Genevieve P.
    Genevieve P. Employee Admin
    Answer ✓

    Hi @SPO MPD

    I'm actually still unsure about the action you're trying to do with the Sheet and the Group. You can Share to an entire Group, or you can select individual people to share to, and individual people as part of a Contact Cell.

    From the Invite Collaborators share window, you just need to type the name of the group and it should appear to select. If you type in the name of one email from within that group the group won't appear, you need to use the Group name.

    You could also click on the blue person icon and then adjust the drop-down from "All Contacts" to "Users and Groups" to see a list of all available groups:


    Then if you want to see who is in a group, after selecting the group you can click on the small drop-down arrow to either simply View the Group Members, or to Expand and invite the group as individual people instead of as a whole.

    See the bottom of this Help Center article to learn more about Expanding a group. Is that what you were looking to do?

Answers

  • Genevieve P.
    Genevieve P. Employee Admin

    Hi @SPO MPD

    Would you mind clarifying what you mean when you say, "I am not able to access the group in any of our sheets"?

    Groups can be edited and created from the Group Management section of the Admin Center (as you've found).

    Then in your sheet, you can Share a sheet to a group, but you cannot select a Group as a "Contact" in a cell (does that make sense?). The Help Center article on Groups (here) has more information.

    If I've misunderstood your question it would be helpful to see screen captures outlining your issue, but please block out any sensitive data.

    Cheers!

    Genevieve

  • SPO MPD
    SPO MPD ✭✭

    Hi @Genevieve P,

    My apologies–my question was not very clear.

    My colleague made a Group, but I am simply unable to use this group. It shows up in my Group Administration page, but when I want to grab an email address from the Group in a sheet, nothing comes up.

    Does that bring more clarity? Thanks for your help!

    –Alec

  • Melina Ovchiyan
    edited 12/19/20

    Hi @Genevieve P

    I need to create a list-serve a way to communicate with a group, and have the group share/provide information or share answers to the rest of the people. Wondering how I can create such a group in Smartsheet?

    This needs to be a protected environment to share comments/feedback with the group so not sure if there is a way to create this list-serve within Smartsheets?

    I see a need to create a group first, but I'm not sure how to get to this path? Also, another criteria is having required permissions such as a licensed user in order to create a group. So how do I know if I have the required permissions to create such a group?


    Appreciate any information to get started on this. Thank you!

    Melina

  • Genevieve P.
    Genevieve P. Employee Admin
    Answer ✓

    Hi @SPO MPD

    I'm actually still unsure about the action you're trying to do with the Sheet and the Group. You can Share to an entire Group, or you can select individual people to share to, and individual people as part of a Contact Cell.

    From the Invite Collaborators share window, you just need to type the name of the group and it should appear to select. If you type in the name of one email from within that group the group won't appear, you need to use the Group name.

    You could also click on the blue person icon and then adjust the drop-down from "All Contacts" to "Users and Groups" to see a list of all available groups:


    Then if you want to see who is in a group, after selecting the group you can click on the small drop-down arrow to either simply View the Group Members, or to Expand and invite the group as individual people instead of as a whole.

    See the bottom of this Help Center article to learn more about Expanding a group. Is that what you were looking to do?

  • Genevieve P.
    Genevieve P. Employee Admin

    Hi @Melina Ovchiyan

    Would you be able to explain your process a bit more, or what you are wanting to do with this group?

    It actually sounds like your situation would be best suited to simply sharing one collaborative sheet with each individual person that you want to have access to the information and data. Then you can set up alerts or workflows to send to everyone shared to the sheet.

    This would be easy to manage because then you can add individual people to that sheet as-needed.


    In regards to checking your permissions, this is something that the System Admin for your organization will be able to check for you. There is a specific type of user called a Group Admin (see here) can create these groups, which is a setting that your System Admin can turn on for your account. Your System Admin is the Main Contact for your plan in the Plan Info tab:


    Let me know if that makes sense or if you have any more questions!

    Cheers,

    Genevieve