Introducing a new report builder plus grouping and summary for reports
Hi Smartsheet Community,
Starting today, you’ll see some changes in reports, with the release of a new report builder plus the addition of two top customer-requested features that help you create more powerful and informative reports: grouping and summary.
The new report builder replaces the previous “where, what, when, who” structure with a more intuitive building experience. In the new builder, you’ll see several new tabs in the toolbar of your report, including — Sheets, Columns, and Filter Criteria — you’ll use these tabs to build your report.
Here’s how you set up a report using the new builder:
- After creating a new report, click on Source Sheets to select the sheets from which you want to include information.
- Select Columns to Display to choose the columns you want to include from your source sheets.
- Choose Filter Criteria to create criteria that rows must meet in order to be displayed in your report.
Note: You’ll also see the Sort tab, where you’ll be able to select up to three fields to sort your report by.
As you can see, we’ve streamlined the process for report building by reducing the number of steps to build a report. Also, by bringing the report builder front and center, you’ll be able to more readily see included sheets, columns, and report filters.
Two additional new features further help you extract key information from reports:
- Group: Consolidate common sets of data into groups, so rows can be organized into logical categories or classifications - like tasks by team member, sales by territory, or other parameters.
- Summarize: Summarize information in your report by calculating totals on report columns, and groups, using functions like SUM, COUNT, MIN, MAX, AVG, and more with just a few clicks.
For more information about how to use the new report builder, including group and summarize, take a look at the resources available in the Reports and Dashboards section of the Help and Learning Center.
Note: As you’re editing dashboards that point to reports, you may notice a “Support for Reports with grouping and summary coming soon!” message. Group and summarize are not yet supported in report and chart widgets. Support for these features is on our roadmap and will be coming soon - we’ll update this post when these features are available. In the meantime, if you want to display a report and include grouping and summary, you can publish the report and use the Web Content widget to display the published report. (You’ll find more information about how to Publish a Sheet, Report, or Dashboard and Add Interactive Content to a Dashboard With the Web Content Widget in the Smartsheet Help and Learning center.)
We think these features are a game-changer for reports, and we hope you find value in them! Have any feedback on these features or suggested changes and enhancements? Send it our way by filling out the Product Feedback form (available from the menu here in Community).
Cheers,
Brendan
Comments
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Fantastic news!
I can’t wait to test it out. I hope it solves the issues that came with the first release as well.
I have a million ideas for my clients.
Be safe and have a fantastic weekend!
Best,
Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD
SMARTSHEET EXPERT CONSULTANT & PARTNER
Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD
W: www.workbold.com | E:andree@workbold.com | P: +46 (0) - 72 - 510 99 35
Feel free to contact me for help with Smartsheet, integrations, general workflow advice, or anything else.
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I love the idea of this, and have a ton of use cases that I've been waiting to try.
After first glance (and maybe i'm doing something wrong here?), I don't like how the numbers populate when summarized. For instance, if i have a column formatted for accounting/currency, I was hoping that the summary would also be in that format instead of just a general number:
Also, when you add a new column now, it immediatlely appears at the end of the report, even if I try to add it inbetween 2 existing columns. It was a time saver to have it appear where you were inputting it.
Also, with the filters, I'd like to be able to see the full column name or at least have an option to hover over to see the full name, especially where there are columns that are similarly named (which we have a lot of):
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This is Amazing.. you have taken the number of reports and cut them at least in half !!!
I actually yelled at people in my office this morning and said "COME LOOK AT THIS"
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@Brendan Reed .. Now the next step is to create savable filters on the reports like sheets so that Users can use one report instead of multiples..
An example they can click and say overdue orders and then the report filters that.. etc.. rather than creating a duplicate of my all orders report showing only overdue orders.
I know I could group but it gets into the volume of data..
Still this is amazing
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Already adding groups and summaries to my reports - and already getting feedback from end-users that they love it! Knocked it outta the park on this one!
A couple of suggestions:
-My kingdom for the "edit" popup form that you can access by clicking the down arrow on a row of a report to ONLY include columns/fields that are visible in the report. I usually create reports to restrict the columns user groups have access to from one monster source sheet - but if they figure out how to use that edit feature - it's game over for me. :)
-Grouping on a multi-select contact list column would be helpful EVEN if that means that every combination of users that occurs in the data is shown as a separate 'group'.
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Same story with % of allocation columns.
Great and long awaited feature with huge potential!!!!
But currently feels a little beta to be honest. Please keep up the good work and fine-tune it rapidly.
Greetings
Stefan
Smartsheet Consulting, Solution Building, Training and Support.
Projects for Processes and for People.
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Hi Stefan and S_Karkhoff,
Thanks for your feedback! We have discovered that there is a bug with our number formatting in summaries- sometimes they are taking a few refreshes of the report to show up. To ensure they do appear, make sure that all rows in the group/column have the same number formatting and then try refreshing the report a few times. We are working on fixing this bug so that they appear right away- thank you for your patience!
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Hi Madison,
great that you are so quickly working on it ! 😀
To make it a more interesting puzzle look at my screenshot. Sometimes it works and others not ;-)
Data is coming from identical duplicates of a project set and the % column ist totally 100% formatted as percent.
Smartsheet Consulting, Solution Building, Training and Support.
Projects for Processes and for People.
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That is GREAT news! Phew!
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Are we not able to export the group or summary we create? I don't see that feature/function. This would be great if we could have at least the option to pdf the group or summary info.
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Very exciting times! Looking forward to implementing these changes in our reports. Get that dashboard widget out soon!
😀
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Good news! But waiting for greater new for the reports with groups and summary to be supported in Dashboard widgets.
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Does grouping require the column to be a drop-down or similar type column to work?
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Fortunately, it seems to work with any column type.
I hope that helps!
Be safe and have a fantastic weekend!
Best,
Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD
✅Did my post(s) help or answer your question or solve your problem? Please help the Community by marking it as the accepted answer/helpful. It will make it easier for others to find a solution or help to answer!
SMARTSHEET EXPERT CONSULTANT & PARTNER
Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD
W: www.workbold.com | E:andree@workbold.com | P: +46 (0) - 72 - 510 99 35
Feel free to contact me for help with Smartsheet, integrations, general workflow advice, or anything else.
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I tried using a different sheet to pull data from (the first test report I created included 3 sheets, one that had a column with formulas). That time, I was able to get formatting on the 3rd refresh, but then if i open a new item and go back to my report, the formatting is gone.
Is there a timeline on this bug fix? Or is it just me and I need to contact support directly?
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