Use enhanced global updates for Smartsheet Control Center to quickly and easily publish your blueprint source template to ensure all active projects have the latest structure and remain consistent and standardized.
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Before you begin
To be eligible for enhanced global updates, confirm that your blueprints meet the following criteria:
- Blueprint was created after December 4, 2024
- Blueprint is single-tier
- Blueprint’s storage is set to store new projects in new workspaces of their own (not in pre-existing workspaces that are shared by multiple projects)
- Blueprint doesn’t have optional templates
- Blueprint’s source folder is not used by any other blueprints
- All active projects are already stored in unique workspaces
- No projects have the status Creation failed or Partially deleted
- All active projects should stay consistent with the latest template structure
Enhanced global updates is intended for programs where you don’t want projects to deviate from the template. If you want to preserve project-level customization of template-provided columns (like modifications to dropdown options or column formulas), avoid enabling enhanced global updates for that blueprint at this time.
Enable enhanced global updates
Follow these steps to enable enhanced global updates:
- Navigate to your blueprint in Control Center, select the program, then Manage Program.
- Select Enable enhanced global updates on an eligible blueprint.
- Complete the self-serve enablement flow.
Once you’ve enabled enhanced global updates, all eligible blueprints show the 
- Use the Open template link to access your template in a new tab.
Edit and push edits from templates
Only Control Center Leads with Admin access to the blueprint source template workspace can publish changes.
As a best practice, publish the template immediately after enabling enhanced global updates and before making changes to it. This is especially important if you’re changing column or summary field names in your template. Otherwise, new columns appear (and formulas, forms, and reports use the new, empty column instead).
With enhanced global updates you can add, remove, and update sheets (including columns and cross-sheet formulas), forms, reports, and dashboards. You can also change folder organization.
Once you’ve accessed your template, make your desired changes. Publish the template to sync all active projects with the latest structure. You can optionally preview a project to see what it will look like once you’ve published the current template.
Preview changes before publishing
Select the Preview button at the top of your template, then select the project to preview. This creates a temporary copy of that project workspace that matches the template.
Changes you make in the preview workspace aren’t applied to your real project or template, and all temporary workspaces are automatically deleted.
Use the Publish history button to see a record of change notes, who made updates, and when. You can also view error details if a project doesn’t fully sync with the published template.
Consider the following:
When you publish the template, all active projects sync to it as follows:
- Deleted or otherwise missing sheets, columns, automation workflows, forms, reports, dashboards, widgets, and folders are added to that project.
- Anything deleted or removed from the template is also deleted or removed from the project.
- The order, name, description, and properties (including visibility, editability, dropdown options, and column formulas) of template-provided columns and the titles, strings, location, and styling of template-provided dashboard widgets are overwritten to match the template. Additional columns and widgets individually added to a project move to the end. Project dependency and baseline settings, and frozen columns, may also be adjusted to match the template.
- Any conditional formatting rules that come from the template sync to it, and any missing rules are added. If you’ve deleted any rules, they don’t appear anymore. For project-specific rules, those also sync and move to the bottom of the list. Consider that this might change the priority of the conditional formatting rules you’ve set.
- When syncing automation workflows with enhanced global updates, most workflow settings, including names, customized messages, and activation status, sync to your projects. However, Slack/Teams notification workflows require re-authentication and channel selection in the new sheet, as these details don’t sync.
- Template-provided forms and reports are completely overwritten to match the template structure.
- The themes and styling of template-provided dashboards match the template.
- Items move into the appropriate folder, if necessary, to match how things are organized in the template.
Adding new cross-sheet references or dashboard widgets that reference a specific cell or range of cells is only supported for rows that were present when you first added the sheet to the project. Newer rows show #INVALID REF or Missing data errors. You need to manually fix those.
Enhanced global updates best practices
- If your Control Center program is heavily used on a daily basis, consider enabling enhanced global updates during off-hours to avoid disrupting others.
- Once you enable enhanced global updates, publish your template before making changes to it to better sync all existing projects to the current structure and provide a solid foundation for future updates. This is particularly important if you plan to rename columns in your template.
- Avoid letting unpublished changes pile up in your template. This can make it difficult to remember what changed and confirm that everything is working as expected after publication.
- Avoid using enhanced global updates for blueprints with projects that intentionally deviate from the source template. However, if project Admins are customizing the parts of their project that come from the template, let them know when you’re publishing changes and when you’re done, so they can redo any necessary customizations (like reordering columns, adjusting dropdown options).
Add collections to blueprints with enhanced global updates
You can add collections to your templates after you’ve enabled enhanced global updates. Use those templates for collections to appear in future provisioned projects.
These collections appropriately relink your project items, but you need to manually share them to the project users you want directly from the collection’s UI.
Learn more about sharing collections.
You can’t set up sharing rules for these collections in the Control Center blueprint, and it’s not yet possible to use enhanced global updates to add, update, or delete collections for existing projects.