Locking Rows in Dynamic View

Andrea Mayer
Andrea Mayer ✭✭✭✭✭
edited 06/14/22 inAdd Ons and Integrations

Hello,

I currently have a report in Dynamic View that is used by project leaders to update monthly financial data. I understand how to set specific fields to read-only but not entire rows. In the screenshot below, I would like to lock the "Target" ROW (highlights in blue) but would still like the project leaders to be able to make updates in for each month in the "Actuals/Forecast" row. Is this possible? If so, how?

image.png

Thanks,

Andrea

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Answers

  • Paul Newcome
    Paul Newcome ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    Have you tried locking the row in the actual sheet?

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  • Andrea Mayer
    Andrea Mayer ✭✭✭✭✭

    Hi Paul - yes, it is locked in the sheet but that doesn't pull into Dynamic View.

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  • Andrea Mayer
    Andrea Mayer ✭✭✭✭✭


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  • Andrea Mayer
    Andrea Mayer ✭✭✭✭✭
    Answer ✓

    Hi all - I've found a workaround and no longer need an answer to this. Thank you!

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  • Paul Newcome
    Paul Newcome ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    Are you able to post the workaround so that others searching for a similar solution can know that one may be found here?

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  • Paul Newcome
    Paul Newcome ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    When going through the details panel, you can set specific columns to read only, and you can also leverage conditional logic within the details panel.

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  • Andrea Mayer
    Andrea Mayer ✭✭✭✭✭

    Hi Paul,

    I do not want to lock entire columns, because I still need specific fields within those columns to be editable. I have not found a way for the conditional logic to help with this scenario.

    The workaround I have found is a little clunky but works for what I need. A field in Dynamic View is locked if it is a formula in the source sheet. For each of the fields that I need locked, I have manually entered and "=" in front of each figure. This still shows the same figure in the source sheet and ensures users cannot edit those fields in Dynamic View. This also ensures the other fields within that column are also still editable.

    Thanks,

    Andrea

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  • Paul Newcome
    Paul Newcome ✭✭✭✭✭✭
    Answer ✓

    With conditional logic in Dynamic view, it would not be the entire column that is locked. Only for rows that meet the criteria. It would be on a row by row basis depending on the data in the other cells within that row that determines whether that column in that row can be edited or not.

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  • Andrea Mayer
    Andrea Mayer ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'll test this out. Thanks Paul!

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  • Paul Newcome
    Paul Newcome ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    Happy to help.️


    I personally have leveraged this so that people could see upcoming due dates but could only update the "actual" date for the current stage. So if we have stages 1 - 5, you can use the conditional logic to say that if the current stage is 1, show "Stage 1 Actual" as editable, but then show stages 2 - 5 "due" as read only. Then the next one is if the current stage is stage 2, then show "Stage 2 Actual" as editable and stages 3 - 5 "due" as read only. This is will work on a row by row basis and basically limit which columns can and cannot be edited based on the current stage.

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Categories

Hey @Julie Fortney<\/a> <\/p>

I'll answer what I can and shout out to @Brian_Richardson<\/a> for back up. <\/p>

#1 Report Filters- To my knowledge there isn't a direct Report Filter update however I wondered if the column was a dropdown list - if so, Bridge can update dropdown lists and if the filter was set to select all it made me wonder if the filter would pick it up new selections. (Datashuttle also updates dropdown lists if this method works)<\/p>

#2 I've had problems with a slow sheet erroring out in Bridge. The sheet was massive and Bridge would time-out. Bridge did not help this sheet (it might have been too large for anything to help)<\/p>

#3 -I don't have any experience with Control Center, so sorry, I can't answer those questions<\/p>

My fav Bridge solutions?<\/p>

-Capturing Approver Names in approval workflows<\/p>

-Adding rows - same sheet, different sheets, Child rows to Parents, On a weekly cadence, Adding New rows of acquired data to a status update sheet which feeds into a dashboard report<\/p>

-Translating Employee Ideas from their native tongue to English<\/p>

-Checking FedEx Tracking Status on a sheet's worth of shipments<\/p>

I hope this helps<\/p>

Kelly<\/p>"},{"commentID":373322,"body":"

Hey @Julie Fortney<\/a> !<\/p>

  1. In general you cannot update reports with bridge or the API, you can only get report information and details. So unless you are able to come up with a different solution you may be out of luck. Although, if this is a control center program, you may be able to use \"Dynamic Reports\" which adds new sheets to reports every time a project is provisioned (and removes as projects are archived). <\/li>
  2. Maybe using JavaScript in bridge would help, hard to say. <\/li>
  3. Unfortunately not.. You can not programmatically retrieve a form link (Big functionality gap in my opinion). We have begged Smartsheet to dynamically update forms with control center. Also you can not update the contents of widgets in dashboards with bridge or the api.<\/li>
  4. You could definitely set up a solution to achieve this. It would involve using a summary sheet in your blueprint where the link to your template sheets is profile data on your summary sheet. From there you can get the sheet id for each project in bridge, loop through them and make updates.<\/li><\/ol>"},{"commentID":373373,"body":"

    @Kelly Moore<\/a> thanks for the shout out :-) but I'm not sure I can help more than what's already been posted. <\/p>

    @Julie Fortney<\/a> in general Bridge is an API tool. You can setup multi-branched workflows in Bridge with pre-set API calls and utilities. You can also do custom HTTP calls to any API that you have access to in the cloud. So anything you can do with API calls you can do with Bridge. It also, importantly, allows you to run Javascript code using the results of your API calls, and to trigger workflows on changes to Smartsheet content or on any other webhook that you can receive from other tools.<\/p>

    There's a fair amount of Smartsheet API methods that are prebuilt into Bridge, but not all of them. So if you're looking at the Bridge documentation for Smartsheet<\/a> integrations and not finding what you need, you can also look at the Smartsheet API documentation<\/a> to see if there's something there to help you out. If you find an API method to use that's not already pre-built as an integration, then you can use the Custom HTTP Call step to directly call the API. You just have to provide the Smartsheet API with an API token, which you can assign to yourself in your Personal Settings.<\/p>

    It looks like your specific questions were answered pretty comprehensively by Kelly and Samuel but here's my 2c:<\/p>

    1. Because you cannot adjust report filters using the Smartsheet API, you cannot do this with Bridge. Here's the Reports methods<\/a>. You might want to consider a workaround for the process of having reports hand-updated with new job numbers. Perhaps leverage a creation date or flag new items with a checkbox that's cleared once the conditions are met that would cause the project to fall back off the report? You can also explore the \"contact has any of current user\" filter to pick up specific jobs for the viewer?<\/li>
    2. You could definitely use Bridge to read one sheet on a schedule or trigger, perform calculations using Javascript or the included utilities, and post the results. It may be faster and more stable than a huge number of formulas in Smartsheet, but I'm not 100% sure it would be. I would probably first explore using Data Mesh, which is setup to do this in a much more friendly way. If you don't already use Data Mesh, it's basically a batch index\/match tool. <\/li>
    3. As Samuel said, there's no API for updating widgets on a dashboard or retrieving a form URL. Also, I tested copying a dashboard and sheet in a common folder, where the form link was embedded in the dash, and unfortunately it does not update the form link. Seems like a gap and would be a good enhancement request. You could potentially work around this by having a common sheet with the form to capture entries, have a dropdown in that form for the project name that you can keep updated with Bridge, do a lookup to the sheet ID that the entry should go to on a sheet that Bridge maintains, and then copy the form responses into the individual project sheets using Bridge. I know that's pretty roundabout.<\/li>
    4. As Samuel and Kelly said, you can push dropdown updates through Bridge, it works better than Data Shuttle. You wouldn't need to maintain a separate lookup sheet though, if you create a report that contains the dropdown columns across your various created sheets, and then read that report with Bridge, the return from the API includes the source sheet ID and column ID for each report row. You can then leverage that to point Bridge at the right columns across your sheets without having to maintain a separate lookup.<\/li><\/ol>

      At Iron Mountain we use Bridge for a variety of use cases, here's the most effective ones:<\/p>