Sharing Recommendations and Limitations

skarkhoff · 03/15/21

I'm rolling out a new process with a client and constantly finding areas where I need to use a work around, only to find that solution won't work in another aspect.

For example, I have one sheet with sales data that needs to be updated constantly by the sales team, however, I don't want them to have access to the sheet, even at a viewer level. So, we decided to use Dynamic View, however some of the basic functionality of sheets doesn't work in DV. (i.e. using the @mention for sending comments, freezing columns, etc.).

There are also a number of reports that they will need to utilize, however I either have to set these up for visibility in Dynamic View - where I can't utilize any of the new grouping or summarizing functionality or create a separate published report for each individual person on the sales team, since the "Current User" functionality doesn't work in published reports.

Has anyone experienced the same limitations? Are there workarounds I'm not thinking of? Even just being able to publish a report with a current user filter would solve so many of the issues I've created workarounds for. What would be really great would be creating reporting that can be shared (just as view only) w/out having to share the underlying sheet.

Any recommendations would be appreciated!

Bassam Khalil · 03/16/21

Hi @skarkhoff

Hope you are fine, could you try the following:

1- create a report with the current user filter.

2- add this report as a report widget in a dashboard.

3- enter this report widget editing advance and select the option Dashboard Viewer like the following screenshot.

4- share this dashboard with your sales team as a viewer and you will see that each user when he opens the dashboard he will see only the tasks assigned to him.

skarkhoff · 03/17/21

@Bassam.M Khalil - In order for anyone to view the report data, I need to share the source sheet, which is what I don't want to do. Hence the frustration!

I submitted an enhancement request a long time ago requesting the ability to share reports without giving sheet access, or having the ability to create a published view, but still being able to filter by user.

@Andrée Starå & @Paul Newcome - you guys always seem to have great workarounds, any ideas? The only things I can think of at this point are to either create individual reports for each team member (which doesn't seem scalable in the long term), or potentially push the data that they are able to see to a separate sheet (or sheets) using DataMesh and just provide reporting based on that.

Help!

Andrée Starå · 03/17/21

Hi @skarkhoff

I hope you're well and safe!

WorkApps is your solution if the client has the plan, Enterprise or higher.

With WorkApps, you can have a report without sharing the underlying sheets and much more.

https://www.smartsheet.com/platform/workapps

Is that an option?

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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skarkhoff · 03/17/21

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/283861#Comment_283861

Unfortunately WorkApps is not an option at this time, we recently introduced the Salesforce Integration, along with a couple other premium apps, so I don't think additional expenses would be approved at this point, and we don't have enough licenses free to allow the full team access to WorkApps.

I'm not totally impressed with WorkApps at this point anyway, so was hoping there was an alternate solution that I just hadn't thought of yet!

Now that the ability to publish a sheet that can be edited without sharing with someone, I was really hoping that something would be introduced to do the opposite - without it being yet another additional cost!

Sharing Recommendations and Limitations

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