Recently there was a change that made searching a dropdown by typing inside of it switch from an exact match method where typing S would only show entries that begin with S to a search within method where typing S would show all results with the letter S in them. I can see how this would be beneficial in some cases, like a very long dropdown, but I have designed every single dropdown to have as few shared first letters in the options as possible for quick and easy data entry.

I can enter information into the adjacent cell and tab into the dropdown cell, type S which only shows SHIPPED, and hit tab to move to the next cell and it will auto fill as SHIPPED. This has become muscle memory to the point where sometimes my response time is quicker than Smartsheet and it tells me it won't accept values not on the dropdown. Now every time I do this it shows a handful of results, which completely kills my workflow.

Most of the programs I've used will offer legacy options as a choice in settings, such as when Excel made the ridiculous change away from lettered columns. Can you please add a function in settings to change this back to the legacy functionality, or potentially put it as an option for each individual Dropdown when it is being setup or edited to allow for using either method depending on which would benefit the use case?

Thank you,

Chris Storch

Problem Statement

Currently, Smartsheet’s native “Request Access” functionality provides very limited governance and administrative control for enterprise environments.

When users request access to a sheet, report, or dashboard:

• The permission level is automatically predetermined (commonly Editor)
• Users cannot specify the level of access needed
• Business justification fields are optional and cannot be enforced
• Admins cannot customize or standardize the request workflow
• Event Reporting lacks sufficient contextual data to support governance auditing and security reviews

This creates operational and compliance challenges for organizations attempting to manage access at scale.

Requested Enhancements

1. Allow Users to Select Requested Permission Level

Provide configurable access-level selection within the native request dialog, such as:

• Viewer
• Commenter
• Editor
• Admin

Admins should also be able to configure which permission levels are requestable.

2. Allow Admins to Require Business Justification

Provide the ability to make the “Reason for Access” field mandatory.

Additional enhancements could include:

• Minimum character requirements
• Custom prompt text
• Conditional requirements based on permission level requested

Example:

• Viewer access → optional reason
• Admin access → mandatory business justification

3. Add Customizable Access Request Forms

Allow System Admins to customize the request workflow with:

• Custom fields
• Dropdowns
• Approval routing
• Manager approval requirements
• Expiration/duration requests

This would significantly improve governance capabilities without requiring external workaround solutions.

Event Reporting / Audit Improvements

While Smartsheet Event Reporting currently captures many sharing and permission-related events, there are still important governance gaps for enterprise access reviews and auditing.

Specifically, administrators currently cannot reliably report on:

• The business justification/reason submitted when requesting access
• The actual individual who approved or granted the access request

Additional governance-focused metadata in Event Reporting would significantly improve auditability and access management transparency.

Requested enhancements:

• Include the user-submitted access request justification in Event Reporting
• Record the actual approver/grantor of access requests (not only the asset owner when applicable)
• Improve visibility into the end-to-end access approval workflow

These improvements would help organizations strengthen:

• Security auditing
• Compliance reporting
• SOX/internal controls
• Access certification reviews
• Incident investigations
• Enterprise governance processes

Currently, organizations often need to rely on email notifications or external workflows to retain this governance information, which limits centralized reporting and audit capabilities.

Business Impact

Many enterprise customers are building custom workflows outside of Smartsheet using:

• Forms
• Power Automate
• Bridge
• APIs

simply to compensate for limitations in the native access request process.

Providing stronger built-in governance controls would:

• Reduce administrative overhead
• Improve security posture
• Increase enterprise adoption
• Improve audit readiness
• Reduce dependency on external tooling

Why This Matters

As Smartsheet continues expanding enterprise capabilities, governance and auditability become increasingly critical.

Native access requests should support:

• least privilege access
• approval transparency
• enterprise compliance standards
• configurable governance policies

instead of relying on fixed, lightweight collaboration workflows.

This enhancement would make Event Reporting significantly more actionable and valuable for enterprise administrators.

What I would like:

Ability to save individual row updates within an Update request session without having to complete them all. This would add a "save" or "confirm update" on each row and if you don't complete them all, it will still show the updated ones as complete and if you re-open that Update Request from the email or notification, it just brings up the incomplete ones.

Thanks 😀

Use Case:

I have a Smartsheet where we collect applications, and each application includes several supporting documents uploaded as individual row-level PDF attachments. When it's time to send these applications for approval, I need to combine all of the attachments into a single PDF file to streamline the review process.

Current Process:

Right now, the only way to do this is to:

1. Manually download all attachments,
2. Combine them using Adobe Acrobat or another PDF tool,
3. Upload the newly combined PDF back to the row or elsewhere.

This is time-consuming and manual — especially when dealing with high volumes of requests.

Feature Request:

I’d love an automation that could:

• Combine all row attachments (PDFs) into a single PDF file,
• Either attach the combined file back to the row or send it via email,
• Ideally trigger this via a workflow or button (e.g. “Send for Approval”).

Bonus Points:

• Support for including the combined PDF when printing or exporting the row
• Option to include only certain files (based on type, filename, or tag)