Enable Comment Permission Level in Workapps

Marc Shecter

Please provide a permission option in Workapps that enables a user to Comment on a sheet without being able to edit the sheet.

In 2021, Smartsheet released the ability for Workapps users to comment. However, since there is no view + comment level of permission in Workapps, a user needs to have Edit permissions in WorkApps to leave a comment.

I use the comment permission level of sheets a lot where I don't want people to edit, but do want to elicit their opinions on the sheet's content. I can't fulfill this use case with Workapps since it only has View, Edit, and Hide permission levels.

For reference, here is a capture from the Workapps help in Smartsheet. Note the highlight which says the, "Role permissions [in Workapps] are independent of the collaborator's permissions on the source item in Smartsheet." I interpret that to mean, that even if I set the source sheet permission to "Comment," I have to set the Workapps permission on the sheet to Edit to enable the users to leave comments on the source sheet. But at the same time, this will enable the user to Edit the source sheet. That is not okay in many situations.

Thanks,

Marc

Neil Egsgard

Great idea. Please make this happen. So far the only work around to allow commenting and show data from unlocked columns is to great a copy of the unlocked column and lock it. This is a waste of resources.

Sean Mc

+159. We really can't use WorkApps without this -- too many of our potential users have never heard of Smartsheet, it makes no sense to them to shell out $60-$700/yr to make a few comments, and even if they did we don't want to give them Editor status.

Leonardo Wu

We really need this to help us track feedback by stakeholders and sponsors who shouldn't edit certain sheets (budget, planning, etc) but definitely should be heard in the context of these sheets.

Mbarton

We need this too in our organization. There are several solutions that will be put on hold without this ability.

kcollins

Yes, this is a huge need. Or to default where viewers can comment. I'd like to hear if it will be addressed with the upcoming changes in Workapps. We were about to launch a huge organization-wide workapp and ran into this issue. There are no plausible workarounds for what we need. We need to be able to show grouped reports (vs dynamic view) and the users that are responsible for entering information should not have admin rights (so locking columns is not an option). I have tried to brainstorm a way around this and am coming up short. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

AWynne

Agree 100%! As mentioned, one of the main perks of WorkApps is that you're not supposed to have to share the source sheet/reports with the users. However, in it's current state, we're basically left to either give the user no edit rights (view) or full edit rights (which grants too much access) - there needs to be a middle ground option.

We work with external clients and our primary goal would be to share a Workapp with them that has all the necessary sheets, reports and dashboards that they need to see. But without some sort of comment-only permission, we're basically stuck with just sharing individual sheets, reports and dashboards that utilize the proper permission levels.

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