Control Center: Managing the Primary Lead role

Assign a service account instead of an individual as the Primary Lead

A recommended best practice is to use a dedicated service account (created within your identity provider and not owned by a specific individual as the Primary Lead.

For example, create a Smartsheet account in your identity provider named smartsheetservice@yourdomain.com.

Using a service account means you don’t have to worry about transferring the Primary Lead or an individual leaving their role or the company. You can just change that password for that service account email and give access to anyone you want to enable as Primary Lead.

Prerequisites

The Primary Lead manages the following key items:

• Intake sheet
• Blueprint source folders (usually within a workspace)
• Summary sheets

If you change the Primary Lead, the new lead assigned must have at least Admin permissions for those items.

When a Program Lead creates a project blueprint, they can choose whether the Primary Lead or the Project Creator is the Owner or Admin of the Smartsheet items (sheets, workspaces, dashboards, reports) created from that blueprint.

Select the program information icon next to the program name to see the Primary Lead for any program.

Change the Primary Lead for a program

If the Primary Lead leaves your organization or moves, you must reassign the Primary Lead role.

Prerequisites

Before transferring the Primary Lead role, ensure the new lead meets the requirements and follow the instructions carefully. If you change the Primary Lead before completing these steps, or you complete these steps out of order, you may see errors.

1. Confirm that the Primary Lead you’re reassigning hasn’t been deactivated or deprovisioned via SSO. If that happens, a System Admin needs to transfer the items to the new Primary Lead.

If the outgoing Primary Lead has already been deactivated, Smartsheet Support isn’t able to transfer items to the new Primary Lead.

2. Make sure your new lead is a paid user in Smartsheet.
3. Add the new lead as an Additional Lead.
4. For Gov accounts only: Increase the new lead's cell limit to 100,000. Contact Smartsheet Support and request this change before you proceed to the next step.
5. Have your new lead log in to Control Center.
6. Transfer ownership of the configuration sheet, intake sheets, summary sheet, workspaces containing blueprint source folders, and any Smartsheet groups used to grant access to workspaces or in the Allowlist (if applicable).

Change the Primary Lead

Once the new lead meets the above criteria, the current lead can complete the role transfer using the following steps:

1. In Control Center, select the program you want to transfer to a new Primary Lead.
2. Select Manage Program, then the i icon next to the program name, and select Edit.
3. Select Click to transfer and select the Additional Lead user you want to make the Primary Lead.
4. Select Transfer in the new window. Control Center checks sharing permissions on Smartsheet items needed for the program.
5. A confirmation message appears when the transfer is complete.

Address any permissions issues before attempting the transfer again. 

For assistance addressing any of these messages, contact Smartsheet Support.