Receiving Sign Off / Approval

Si Spence

Fellow Smartsheeters

We have a process that necessitates the approval of certain managers at certain gates during the process.  What is the most robust way that you have found to ensure approval is received and not just ticked off 'accidentally'   i.e. is it possible to assign a column to one person only?

any ideas welcome,  Thank you,

Mike Wilday

I would suggest creating a report for each individual and sharing their report with them. On their report, you can add only specific information pertaining to the individual, task name, checkboxes, etc. You could limit the person's ability to check only a particular box, by sharing only that box, but they wouldn't necessarily be able to see the other boxes to ensure it was time for their "part" to be completed. 

Reports allow you to send only data that is essential for that report. One workaround we did was to present a status option for each row of the project and in a conditional formula described whether their row was ready to begin or not... If any tasks that need to be completed before their's were not complete, a status column indicated so. 

Here is some more information about reports. Hopefully, this information will help you get started. : 

About Reports

Creating Reports

Scott Willeke

Si,

I think Mike's suggestion around reports is a good one for limiting access to certain columns. Another capability that might be worth considering is Update Requests. Update Requests are a great way to provide a limited editing experience to users.

Use cases like yours are something my team is interested in learning more about as we consider future improvements to the product. So I've asked my team to reach out to set up time for us to talk. I look forward to learning more!

-- 

Scott Willeke | Smartsheet

Senior Product Manager, Strategic Integrations

E: Scott.Willeke@Smartsheet.com

 

Si Spence

Thanks Mike and Thanks Scott,

I'm loathed to introduce yet more Reports as we are getting clogged up with them.  I'm not looking to restrict access to any areas, rather limited the completion of one column to one or more persons.  We use lot's of Reports and we are very familiar with Update Requests...both work great but are not suitable in this case.

One Challenge with Reports is the limitation for 'Alerts',  so i know that Reports can be auto generated but if nothing has changed or if Report is blank then the recipient still receives (needlessly) that Report.  

I'll keep tinkering.  Thanks both.

DanS

Hi Mike, 

The new feature Approval Requests, under the Alerts & Actions tab will fill your requirement.

In this Smartsheet test, I made a rule that if a certain activity is updated to 100% complete, it will send an approval request to the approver (in the test, I sent the approval to myself).

It takes under a minute to be sent to my phone (Android, using the Google Play Smartsheet app). 

The mobile app's interface will then allow the user to view what is to be approved, and have the option to decline or approve.

Very cool!  Try it out

Thanks,

Dan