Conditional cell locking/unlocking

WillieBNZ

Hi there,

I saw an older article (2019) noting conditional field locking not possible but I figured I'd check in including a specific use case.

Scenario: Employees belong to one of 8 labour groups however only 3 of the 8 allow a certain type of pension processing to take place.

• Column 1 is the employee name
• Column 2 is the labour group (cells have 8 different values in a drop down)
• Column 3 gets filled out with a date when the specific pension plan action takes place, driving a workflow that triggers an email to specific workgroups. This should only be permittable if one of the 3 labour groups is set in column 2.

I know I could curate the workflow to only send the email if the labour group is in one of the 3, but I am trying to avoid data in column 3 unless truly reflective.

Thx

Willie

WillieBNZ

Thx everyone. I ended up going with some of the info at https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/81439/lock-a-cell-unless-conditions-met to keep simple.

Step 1: If the analyst is building out the record for a specific employee and enters one of the labour groups in column 2 where I don't want to trigger the email workflow on, I built a second workflow that puts a "Not Required" note in the cell of column 3.

Step 2: Change the email workflow triggered on column 3 to look for "Yes" and not just any change text such as "Not Required"

Gia Thinh

Hi WillieBNZ,

In the condition block, you can add columm 2 and column 3 as conditions to send email. Hope it works.

WillieBNZ

Thx Gia. This works for managing when to send/not send however is there a way to lock the actual data entry itself into column 3 based on the data in column 2?

Andrée Starå

Hi @WillieBNZ

I hope you're well and safe!

Could you use the Record a date feature, maybe combined with what you already have?

Would that work/help?

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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WillieBNZ

Cheers. Will check in a bit. Thx so much.

Andrée Starå

@WillieBNZ

Excellent!

Happy to help!

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WillieBNZ

Thx everyone. I ended up going with some of the info at https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/81439/lock-a-cell-unless-conditions-met to keep simple.

Step 1: If the analyst is building out the record for a specific employee and enters one of the labour groups in column 2 where I don't want to trigger the email workflow on, I built a second workflow that puts a "Not Required" note in the cell of column 3.

Step 2: Change the email workflow triggered on column 3 to look for "Yes" and not just any change text such as "Not Required"

Andrée Starå

@WillieBNZ

Excellent!

Glad you got it working!

✅Please support the Community by marking the post(s) that helped or answered your question or solved your problem with the accepted answer/helpful. It will make it easier for others to find a solution or help to answer!