Color item no longer representing on dashboard

David Dolch

I have a sheet where a person sets project status. They can choose Green, Yellow, Red, Grey or Blue. Since Smartsheet cannot handle 5 color lights, I do the following. The person can set G, Y, R or Grey directly. If their project is launched (blue), then instead they check a box indicating it it has launched. I have a helper column with the following formula in it:

=IF(Checkbox32, "🔵", Symbol21)

If the Launched Box is checked, it is the Blue Circle. If not, then it is whatever status the User set in the Symbol column.

I then have a Dashboard, with a widget that grabs the value in the cell with the formula in it, and displays it as project status. This has worked perfectly for the last year.

Here is an example of it working with a green status.

However, recently (I had a user notice it on 11/23) the blue dot is no longer displaying as a blue dot. It now looks like this

If I hover over the widget, it displays a small blue dot to the side.

The blue dot appears correctly in the cell on the sheet that the dashboard is pulling the information from.

Has anyone else encountered a similar issue ? Any fixes?

I know there were some updates to the dashboard recently. Does anybody know if this was an impact?

Genevieve P.

Hi @David Dolch

Is it possible this has to do with the browser you're using to look at the Dashboard? I'm on a mac and using Chrome and your emoji appears. I also tested with the blue ball symbol from the symbol column:

Can you try logging out and logging in again to see if this helps? If not, it would be useful to see a screen capture of the source sheet where this is coming from.

Thanks!

Genevieve

David Dolch

I doubt it is the browser. We use a combination of Chrome and Safari, and it is happening on both.

The graphic appears correctly in the source sheet. The only place it does not appear correctly is on the Dashboard itself. As I said, it was working fine for over 50 users for over a year on a variety of OS and browsers, and now it is not working for anybody. The commonality here is Smartsheet.

Here is an example of the source sheet - the blue dot displays on my machine/browser

And this is what the widget on the dashboard displays - pulling from the cell with the blue dot in it.

Genevieve P.

Hi @David Dolch

Would you mind providing more information?

I presume you're using the Metric Widget to display this on the dashboard, is that correct?

The emoji in your screen capture is different than the one in your formula above. Would you be able to copy/paste the exact formula from this sheet, with the correct symbol?

(Or if it doesn't paste properly in the Community, can you identify where you got the symbol?) If I can follow your exact steps it will help us narrow down the potential cause.

Thanks,

Genevieve

David Dolch

Here is the formula that is used on the source sheet

=IF(Checkbox32, "🔵", Symbol21)

If Checkbox32 is checked, then it is the blue ball. If it is not checked then it uses the Red, Green, Yellow, or Grey ball from Symbol21

Technically this is not the exact cell the dashboard pulls from. Since this is on a Control Center metadata sheet, every item is copied over into a value column so that Control Center can create the proper cell linking to the roll up sheets and this also where all dashboards pull from as well.

The above IF formula is in cell Symbol68

Cell Value69 has the following formula: =Symbol@row

The dashboard is using a metric widget that is referencing Value68

For the record, it makes no difference if I change the reference to Symbol68, it still displays the same cross hatched ball.

Genevieve P.

Hi @David Dolch

I'm unable to replicate what you're seeing with this specific symbol/emoji, it should pull through: 🔵

I've also tested on a number of different browsers and network connections. It may be specific to your set-up and how things are linked/created. At this point I would suggest the best way to troubleshoot this will be via a private channel with Support where you can share the full screen and set-up with Smartsheet Support. A video screen recording of the set-up, from original source to finish, would be helpful for them.

Thank you!

Genevieve

Genevieve P.

Hi @David Dolch

In looking at this further, my colleagues on Windows and Chrome see the grey emoji displayed in a Dashboard as well! We've identified the issue to be specific to Windows and the updated version of Chrome - see the Chrome Issues Detail reported here.

In the meantime, Firefox should show the colour as expected.

Since this issue is specific to emojis and unicode, I would suggest using a Symbol Column in Smartsheet that has a blue ball associated with it, so you display the blue Smartsheet Status Ball instead of the emoji. Then you could perhaps use a Radio Button Emoji or the White Ball, since this will appear Grey in the Dashboard anyway.

I hope this helps,

Genevieve

David Dolch

Genevieve,

Thank you for looking into this and determining the root cause.

Unfortunately Firefox is not an option. As a large enterprise company, we do not have the luxury of choosing what browser and other software we use on corporate machines.

This blue color ball is also not something that is easy to change. The logic of using Red, Green, Yellow, and Grey with a Blue Unicode ball when a box is checked was implemented as part of our Control Center blueprint, in order to accommodate the fact that Smartsheet does not have a option to use 5 color balls (in fact it was a Smartsheet Solutions Architect that suggested it). I have over 150 project packages (consisting of about 20 sheets, reports, and dashboards each) in flight with over two dozen roll up sheets and 300+ dashboards that reference this information. CCC Global Update is limited in what it can do, and I am not about to change all of that manually.

At least now I know what the issue stems from and I can let my user community know to explain things accordingly.

Thanks again for your help.

Genevieve P.

Hi @David Dolch

I understand, thank you for explaining your process further.

In testing, we've discovered another alternate solution; try to un-bold the value in the metric widget configuration it should fix the problem for now, until the Windows/Chrome issue is resolved.

Cheers,

Genevieve

David Dolch

Interestingly, the bold / unbold works on a sheet. However, regardless of the setting on the sheet, when the widget pulls it into the dashboard, the problem still manifests.

Now that I know a fix is in the works, and it is a Chrome issue, I can communicate that to the user community, and wait for the fix

Thanks for your help!