Transferring Ownership of Multiple Sheets/Reports/Dashboards at once

Jake Gustafson

Hello, I've got a scenario where I helped a user (let's call him User 1) create a process, however, he (User 1) has switched positions and it is time to reassign ownership of things to another individual (User 2). Between me and the original user (User 1), we created all the sheets, reports, and dashboards in the Workspace. I first transitioned ownership of the Workspace to the new owner (User 2), but now User 1 and I need to go into individual sheets, reports, and dashboards and change ownership to User 2 one by one. I did this for a good chunk of items today, but now I just got 24 e-mails confirming that User 2 accepted ownership. I guessing he also got 24 e-mails requesting that he take ownership. I feel like there should be a better way to mass change ownership. Maybe I'm missing something here. Open to suggestions. Hopefully, this isn't a frequent thing, but in the event that it is needed, an efficiency gain would be nice.

Thanks in advance for any and all feedback.

Mike Wilday

Have you tried the steps in this article?

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2482643-nondestructive-transfer

This works great if you are transferring all of a users items to another user.

Jake Gustafson

@Mike Wilday, no I had not seen that article. At first glance I thought it would be the solution, however, it is an all or nothing transition. I don't know what else this user owns, so I don't want to impact him there, I only want to transition his (and my) ownership within a single Workspace. I own a ton of sheets, reports, dashboards, so changing everything that I own would be overkill for what I'm looking for. Also, the same user I described as User 1 in my original scenario owns a Workspace that I'd like to transition ownership to another user, not the User 2 described above.

So, I'm looking for the middle ground where I can select multiple files within a Workspace and choose to reassign ownership. Even if that requires working with our System Admin, who I had to connect with to see into the Admin Center.

I'm preparing for the response that says to submit a Product Enhancement here for what I'm looking for and the team at Smartsheet will evaluate.

Mike Wilday

Give this one a try:

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/506692-transfer-ownership-of-a-workspace

Or is that what you already attempted to do? There is a checkbox in the process to transfer ownership of the individual items in the workspace as well. Perhaps this will work?

Jake Gustafson

Yeah @Mike Wilday I did that for starters. I was the original Owner and it transferred ownership of folders along with the Workspace, but individual sheets, reports, and dashboards did not all seem to transfer. Now for instance, I've got a folder that is owned by the Workspace owner, but the 5 Reports within it are owned by me. If I could check them all and reassign ownership to send him one e-mail to accept the bunch or sub-select what he will take ownership of, then that would be better than manually opening each report, clicking Share, toggling him from Admin to Owner, shooting him an e-mail from Smartsheet, then me getting one back acknowledging that he accepted.

Andrée Starå

Hi @Jake Gustafson

I hope you're well and safe!

This part is essential; I guess you might have missed checking that box.

Check the checkbox next to Give them ownership of your items in the workspace as well to transfer items you own in the workspace in addition to transferring the workspace itself.

I hope that helps!

Have a fantastic week & Happy New Year!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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