Microsoft Teams- Smartsheet needs admin approval

Susan Papali

@Randy B CDN I am reposting my email response to you here in case others have similar questions.

The short answer is yes, we are asking for additional permissions with the recent update. 

Previously, users of the Smartsheet integration with Microsoft Teams had to publish their Smartsheet assets to add them as Tabs within Teams. However, publishing Smartsheet assets means that the Smartsheet item becomes available to anyone with the link, which was a security concern for many customers. But now, with the new version, users can feel confident and secure about adding Smartsheet assets as Tabs within Teams because we allow them to share the asset with the members of their Teams channel without requiring them to publish it. Users still have the option to publish the asset if access within their organization isn’t a security concern or if their Teams channel membership changes frequently.

So for us to know the email address of the team members that need to be shared to the Smartsheet asset, we need to get permission to read members of the channel.

Stephanie B

Thank you @Bex for sharing with @Marcia562. Notifications from this site were hitting my junk folder and I just noticed them today. Glad the workaround is working for others. Again, not ideal, but for our team - who really only needs a view/read only access - it works for now. We are the ONLY team in the organization that uses Smartsheet, so we don't grant accesses through IT. It's us! Hopefully a fix comes soon to just make the whole process a little easier.

Hassan_Afzal1

Hi @Susan Papali,

Hope you're well?

Thank you for the information on the fix. We are currently experiencing this issue and are hoping to implement this solution to resolve the issue for us.

We're attempting to gain approvals so we can implement this, but our architects are concerned about the increase in permissions required via the admin approval.

Are you able to provide any information on why the following permissions are required, specifically those that require "write" permissions?

The additional permissions being requested are:

* Maintain access to data you have given it access to.

* Read and write to all app catalogs.

* Read directory data.

* Read all groups.

* Read and write all groups.

* Read all users' full profiles

* Read all groups.

The permission given originally were:

* Sign in and read user profile."

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you

Hassan Afzal

Correla

Susan Papali

Hi @Hassan_Afzal1

Thank you for your question!

In late August, we released a change to the Smartsheet MS Teams tabs integration that allowed customers to add a tab without needing to publish a Smartsheet asset. In the previous version of Smartsheet Tabs, there was only one option of publishing an asset to a Tab and this legacy version did not require any permissions. However, we received a lot of feedback that customers don't feel confident in publishing an asset as it generates a unique URL that anyone can access without logging in to Smartsheet. For the new Tabs integration, we've added an additional option of sharing assets to members within a channel as a Tab. This provides more confidence and security for customers as it only allows channel members to have access to the asset. And, in order to grab the list of channel members to share the asset, we now require the permission ChannelMember.ReadAll. I’m attaching the image of the permission screen for the new Tabs integration.

The  Read and write all groups permission is requested by the Smartsheet Bot app. The Bot app is the capability that allows you to send notifications. And the permission of the bot app hasn’t changed for the last 2 years. We are aware that the current permissions of the bot are broader than it needs to be, and we are working on addressing this.

I hope this help!

fhokkanen

We've been experiencing this same issue for a few months and as of today it looks like it has been resolved. I was prompted by the same thing but then it refreshed and allowed me to successfully add a Teams tab (from the app) like I used to be able to (from what I can tell.)

Jimmy_B

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/346650#Comment_346650

Hi @Susan Papali, have the permissions for the Smartsheet Bot app been updated/narrowed as yet?

Also, is there somewhere where these are published? I've been looking but can't yet find anything.

Thanks

James