Unforced Error – Smartsheet UX change

Usually, I try to avoid sports analogies 1, but this particular one is in my lexicon and has evolved beyond sports. For me it translates to: “Oh no. You really didn’t need to do that. But you did it anyway. Oops.” On Dec 14, 2018, Smartsheet released the second of its large user experience (UX) changesRead more

Smartsheet: Multiple Contact Selection is Here. NOW WHAT?

The Gist At ENGAGE 2018, Smartsheet released a feature that has been long requested and much demanded on the Community Posts and I assume elsewhere. Assigning Multiple People to a Task I won’t go into my opinions on it1. There is no time to waste. Really. It is here and what should you do aboutRead more

Smartsheet: Bulleted Lists

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Today’s Tip (2018-08-22): Based on this Community Post Smartsheet does not have a rich text field and the user requested bullets.   Here’s a quick way to get the result. I wouldn’t use this very often, but I don’t need to use all of my work-arounds, though it helps.   I set up a secondRead more

Smartsheet: Sort by Parent (Ignore Children)

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Today’s Tip (2018-08-03): Based on this Community Post. The user wanted to sort a hierarchy, but only on the Parent Row. Here’s how: I created a column named [Sort Order]. I added this formula: =IF(COUNT(ANCESTORS()) = 0, [Primary Column]@row, COUNT(ANCESTORS())) to each cell. It checks if this is a Parent Row (COUNT(ANCESTORS()) = 0) andRead more

Smartsheet Tip: Release items from memory (Chrome)

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This tip refers to Smartsheet, Google Chrome, and Windows (I’m on Win 10 as I write this) I found this tip recently as I was trying to figure out which Chrome tabs, of the many  I had open, were causing my work (which I often do on the Internet) to slow down. I tend toRead more

Defaulting to A Date in a Smartsheet WebForm

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Smartsheet‘s Forms allow a date to be selected when building the Form. Unfortunately, that [Today] button only selects today’s date, not setting the default to whatever date the form is used. This has never really been a major problem for me. Once the form is submitted, I captured the row’s creation date, in effect capturing “today”. BasedRead more

Finding “Next” Task in Smartsheet

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Today I was trying to get some energy and motivation by perusing the  Smartsheet Community and I ran across a question that helped with those. I will paraphrase the problem: A main task has a series of sub-tasks. The user want to check the status of each sub-task and return the status of the first non-completed taskRead more

Smartsheet: Secure Your Sheets with X-Sheet References

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A Common Request One of the common requests I see on the Smartsheet Community and hear from my customers is how can we make the data more secure? “I want to share only certain data to my _____” (vendor/customer/peer/team member) Repeat after me: Smartsheet is not a relational database. But it is getting closer toRead more

Smartsheet: Set up Update Requests to increase workflow velocity

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A Semi-Random Walk from Problem to Solution Warning: The Owner of the Sheet for this solution requires a Business or Enterprise Smartsheet license. This solution started in an odd place. Looking back on it, it doesn’t  seem so odd but at the time, I didn’t know where I would end up. I had a largeRead more

Smartsheet: Cross Sheet References (X-Sheet Ref) are here. Now what?

It has been a long time coming. I wasn’t sure if it would. I wasn’t sure if it should. But it is here, so we better get ready. (Warning: Personally, I’m not fully ready yet. Every time I look at a Sheet or Report, my mind spins with redesign possibilities. Or maybe it’s the meds.Read more