Folder-level permissions

Jon Barto

I would love to have folder level permissions instead of just workspaces.

We are a construction company that uses Smartsheet. Each project manager has their own sheets and schedules.

So we would like to share a workspace with people that need access to everything. But would be great to have folder access to only allow those people access to certain sheets.

I know we can do a workspace, but the problem is every time we add a pm we would have to create a new workspace. And we have hundreds of reports already made so we would have to redo them every time we create a new workspace..

I’m kind of surprised, smart she does not have some sort of folder level access to go with the workspace access.

Jon Barto

It would be great to grant folder level permissions instead of a bunch of workspaces. We also have issues when hiring a new team member. We have to now create another workspace (which is easy) but the 250 reports linked to other workspaces now have to be updated to include the new workspace.

Where if we had say a workspace for construction and each pm had their own folder access. The reports would just feed off the workspace. And anytime we added or deleted a pm they the reports would not be affected.

Also some of our projects have multi sheets all liked together in a folder. So it would give them access to the folder and keep things way more organized.

I cant believe this is not part of how smartsheet works. Its seems like such a basic idea but a huge need.

Joe Lederman

Unless I am missing something, there is no way to set permissions at a folder level, only at the workspace or individual document level. Why have a setup which is different from every other software package in the world? I should be able to grant workspace permissions and then different permissions to the FOLDERS within them and have those FOLDER level permissions apply to the contents of the folder unless I make manual changes. In that manner I could have a workspace which is shared with a number of people as editors and perhaps restrict some of them to view only for some subfolders or even remove their access to subfolders completely.

echarles

We'd very much love to see the ability to manage permissions by Folders, too. It's a high priority for us, as the number of workspaces we need to compensate is becoming unmanageable.

Barry Bowles

I manage teams of people working on different projects for each client. This means that I either have to give access to everyone for everything if I use folders to organize projects or I have to create a separate workspace for each project (just not practical) so currently I create a separate workspace for every client and still end up giving permissions I do not wish (or need) to give. Our projects are confidential in nature and our clients expect us to only give access to their information to people engaged to work on the client's projects.

Whether the solution is nested workspaces or sharing at folder level with ability to nest folders (and sharing) the current level of permissions does not alow us to conduct business with the appropriate levels of security unless we manually assign permissions to every sheet.

Smartsheet, please prioritize upgrading this feature as it has already forced some of my colleagues to try competing products to solve this issue.

Shellie Howe

Role based security would be an awesome base function for Smartsheet. Having to purchase Dynamic View to accomplish this isn't always feasible for small companies.

Molly H

Adding my two cents in an attempt to keep this request interesting to the Smartsheet team...

I also work in construction and we roll up projects from the control center blue print by folder. Each project has several sheets organized by field work and budgetary. Our field team needs access to the field folder and our Project management team and leadership team need access to both field and budgetary folders.

Our current work-around is going to be to create a budget workspace, however this will require manual renaming of the budgetary file so it includes the project name as well as manually dragging and dropping all projects budgetary folders into the workspace.

Any word on if the request for folder level permissions is being explored by the Smartsheet team?

Eric Dorneles

Same here at Accruent. We use Smartsheet for professional services deliveries, splitting the implementation and managed services teams into two workspaces. Each workspace has folders for each project, shared among the PS team and the client users. The problem is, since we have multiple sheets and/or reports for the projects, we need to share them individually with the same users, it would be much easier if we could share the folder and the items inside it could inherit the permissions.

isa.ohara

We desperately need this with one critical addition:

Currently in Control Center - we can create a group, and then give that group access to the project folder when deploying a project - this gives them access to the project folder in its entirety. If we could just select a folder - rather than the sheets individually, and also have the group name pulled from a column provided in the Intake Sheet - then we could go back to using automation - rather than doing these things manually.

Even better would be to be able to pull the group name from a column in the intake sheet - AND the permission level allowed for that group... and then have the ability to have more than one group - with multiple columns in Intake.

I hope that makes sense!

vdemattei

This would also be very helpful in our orginization. We collect sensitive data using form submissions and need to manage security via permissions. I'd love to be able to only allow certain people to view attachments or manage security for specific attachments, but for the time being, I had to create an entirely separate Workflow for only the people that are allowed access to this sensitive information. It would be a step in the right direction to have these permission settings at the folder level. Ultimately, for me, I'd love for permissions/security to be even more customizable than that.

Andrée Starå

Yes, sharing folders separately is a welcome feature, and many of my clients want this feature to make it easier to handle their projects in Smartsheet.

Brenda Merrill

This is a greatly needed enhancement. We manage very large Programs through Control Center with multiple workstreams and projects under that Program Workspace. The folder tree and artifacts are extensive with many being confidential. Like other commenters, because of the time-consuming process of giving access at each artifact level, we end up giving most people access to the entire Program workspace and confidential data they really should not have access to.

Jordan McC

I agree - this is a critical fix that I hope Smartsheet will prioritize. My organization needs the ability to create folder-level permissions. Our workspaces are high-level programmatic themes and the folders are project-based. We need the ability to give external partners access to project folders.

DonaldW

Obviously, this is not a priority for Smartsheet as it has been more than a year with no solution.

Brooke Y

This feature would be a huge benefit for my organization. As our teams, use of Smartsheet, and projects grow, we are finding we have to either create new Workspaces with different permissions for users, or remove Workspace permissions and add individuals (or groups) to each sheet they need. This is especially prevalent where we have managers that want to see specific items, but don't want the whole team to see them, and the managers dont want to have to go to multiple workspaces to get what they want.