Smartsheet's Dynamic View blocked in China

Ricardo T

Hi,

My team and I set up a process to request updates to our partners in mainland China using Dynamic View. 

Two weeks ago, we started to receive notifications from our partners that they can't create their Smartsheet accounts to access the Dynamic View, or even worst, those who were able to set up their account 1 or 2 months ago can't access now to the Dynamic View to make their data submissions. 

This situation represents a major problem for us since my process highly depends on the data from our partners in mainland China.

So far, Smartsheet hasn't provided a solution for this. Therefore I'm posting this in the Smartsheet community to know if you have faced similar issues in collecting data from users in mainland China. 

What options can we take to keep collecting data from our partners? Is there any way to connect Smartsheet with Microsoft 365 tools to get the data?

Paul H

In my experience its really hit and miss with the great firewall, something can work one day, be blocked the next, then back working again.

We have had success using VPN's, but that can again be spotty which ones works each day. By far the most stable was to hotspot to my cell phone that had a foreign SIM card. Cost me about $10/day to use the data from my Canadian plan.

Ricardo T

Thanks, Paul. I agree with your comment about the VPN. One day our partners' VPN works, but the other day, they don't. And it is quite frustrating since we need their input, but we can't get it, which forces us to circle back to Excel submissions and more manual work on our side. 

Thanks for the tip on the mobile hotspot! Had not thought of that.

Have a great day. 

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/337543#Comment_337543

Ian W Swanwick

We have used a method that works fine, but only provided your data is not in any way confidential/proprietary.

Publish the sheet as HTML Ready only and use a webform to add the (initial) content. The webform contains the hyperlink to the published sheet and the sheet contains a hyperlink to the webform. Neither the published sheet nor the webform url is blocked and there is no need for a Smartsheet account. Of course, anyone with the link can see the data...