Share Data Shuttle Workflows
Julie Fortney
Overachievers
We are fortunate to have multiple Data Shuttle gurus in our organization, but it has become difficult to track who owns the workflows that manage different dropdowns and sheet rows. It would be fantastic if there were ways for all users to easily identify what dropdowns/rows are being updated via Data Shuttle workflows, and better yet, be able to view or edit them. Here's a sample scenario, along with some suggested improvements:
Scenario: We populate project-selection dropdowns on many different forms using Data Shuttle. Today a team member contacted me because one form's project-selection dropdown was missing some recent projects. I wasn't able to tell any of the following:
- Is the dropdown list maintained manually or via Data Shuttle?
- If via Data Shuttle, who owns that workflow?
- What are the workflow settings?
To make troubleshooting easy, I recommend the following:
- Add an indication to the sheet that a Data Shuttle workflow is in play. (e.g. a note in the column settings that says "* Dropdown list managed via Data Shuttle workflow."
- Better yet, make the note say, "* Dropdown list managed via Data Shuttle workflow owned by user xyz."
- As the best option, make that note a clickable link that takes you to the Data Shuttle workflow itself. The owner of the workflow could enable view and edit permissions on each workflow.
Comments
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I feel this is greatly needed. I am scheduled to leave my position and would like to transfer the data shuttle workflows (over 50) to another person. Without this function, the person has to go in and rebuild each data shuttle workflow which is very time consuming with all the filters built into each one.
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I think both the ability to track and know who created a Data Shuttle workflow, and transfer them to another user, are mission critical issues that Smartsheet needs to address, no matter how many votes this gets in this Community. If Data Shuttle workflows break--or otherwise need to be changed/updated--and you cannot find them or access them because a user has left your company or been deleted, it could bring an entire organization to a halt. This is a major vulnerability that must be addressed.
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100% upvote, the only other data shuttle user in my company left this year. Took hours for him to detail his workflows for me, and hours more of me to recreate them. Painfully inefficaiant.
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Could you not click on the cell history and see what has been changed in the cell and by who or what? I do agree that there does need to be better ways to identify Data Shuttles, but sometimes, using the cell or page history can give you a lead to what is going on with data flowing in and out of your sheet.
Jonathan Sanders, CSM
"Change is always scary because it is unknown, but facing the unknown is what makes us stronger."
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@Kleerfyre That's a good point! It's not as straightforward as it could be, but if I look at a sheet's activity log and see that a coworker has modified a dropdown list at 2am every day, that's a pretty good sign that they are updating it via Data Shuttle.
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This is a highly needed request. We found a workaround to use a service account for creating our Data Shuttle workflows, but still have to manage access and passwords every time someone who has the account information leaves. The Service account option is not a secure option for us.
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We have used Data Shuttle workflows extensively to create reports in Smartsheet from large sets of data drawn from external databases but the restriction where one team member cannot share his/her workflow with another member has been causing a lot of hinderances, especially when they move out of the team/organization. It would be great to have this feature where data shuttle workflows can be shared between small groups of people who belong to the same team, just like Dynamic View.
Ipshita Mukherjee
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This was my thought when I found out the workflows were solely mine after 6 months of development.
Everyone has a way of finding uploads, but has anyone found a way to find a rogue workflow offloading your company data? Let me know. Asking for a friend.
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Jason,
Our offloads are via to Sharepoint and as such require a Microsoft login. If there are data shuttles trying to offload using a deactivated account you should be able to see failed logins in the Microsoft portal. However, I think the largest call out of this thread is the lack of being able to see who is using the integrations within an organization. This should be stored in the database and I just submitted a help desk ticket to find out. I'll keep everyone updated.
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I was thinking if Smartsheet can add the ability to share workflows such as data shuttle and data mesh.
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Agree, that there needs the ability to transfer workflow ownership or at least be able to share workflows with other people. Currently, we have one person who can kick off some of the non scheduled/ triggered workflows ..and if they are out of the office ..then we have to wait until they return. Also, there is high risk if that person leaves the organization abruptly that the workflows may not get transitioned/ recreated before they are no longer availabile.
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Email I received in early March regarding this issue. Can anyone from Smartsheet confirm release within the year as it is suggested here that it is not apart of the SS plan.
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@Samuel Mueller Hi Sam! The EAP release is essentially step 1 on the path to Data Shuttle workflow sharing. So it will allow System Admins to do some "management" of workflows (archiving, pausing, viewing activity log, etc.) but unfortunately still does NOT cover sharing, which is a very high priority on our roadmap for this year. We've heard a lot of feedback that this is a huge pain point and definitely want to address this as soon as possible!
Danielle W.
Product Marketing
Smartsheet
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