Learning Track
This Help Article appears in the Get Started learning track. Get the most out of this learning track by starting at the beginning.
This Help Article appears in the Get Started learning track. Get the most out of this learning track by starting at the beginning.
Begin collaborating with others by sharing a Smartsheet item (sheet, report, or dashboard) or by confirming a sharing request from someone on your team.
The best method to use for sharing will depend on the number of items you want to share and how many people you want to share with:
Once your items are shared, you can learn some best practices here: more about what to expect here: Work with Multiple People on a Sheet at the Same Time.
When you share an item with someone, that person will need to log in to Smartsheet to access it. You control the level of access a person has through the sharing permission level you choose—Viewer, Editor, or Admin. You can stop sharing an item or change a collaborator's permission level at any time. For more information about Smartsheet permissions, please see Sharing Permission Levels.
If you find that a report looks different for you than it does for someone that you've shared it to—if it's missing information or blank—you may not have shared all of the source sheets with that person.
For security purposes, a report doesn't give access to sheets that haven't already been shared to a user. For example, you can share a report that looks across three sheets to a collaborator who only has access to one of them. When the collaborator opens the report, they'll only see rows pulled from the one sheet that's shared to them. If the collaborator isn't shared to any sheets, their version of the report will be blank.
- If you’d like to share a report with somebody who doesn’t have access to the source sheets, you can publish the report and share the link. For more information about publishing, see Publish a Sheet, Report, or Dashboard.
- You can also insert the report as a widget in a dashboard. For more information on the Report widget, check out the Widget Types for Smartsheet Dashboards article.
A System Admin can remove a user from sharing items owned by licensed users on the account. For more information, see Manage Users in a Multi-User Plan.
A Group Admin can remove a member from a group to also remove them from all items that are shared to that group. For more information, see Manage and Use Smartsheet Contact Groups.
People shared with Owner, Admin, and Editor - Can Share permissions have the ability to share Smartsheet items.
If the item is located in a workspace, you can either share it individually or share the entire workspace. For more information, see Sharing an Item from a Workspace later in this article.
The collaborators will be shared to the item and will receive a notification if you opted to send one. The Sharing form will be updated to display the list of shared Collaborators including those you just added.
You can ensure that a collaborator is looking at an item with the same view and filters applied by sending them the URL from the address bar of your browser. (Learn more about views.)
If you want to collaborate or share data without sharing people directly to your Smartsheet items, you can use any of the following options:
When a sheet, report, or dashboard exists in a workspace, it will be available to anyone who has sharing permissions for the workspace. Even when it's in a workspace, the item can be shared at the item level so that people who don't have access to the workspace can still have access to the item.
You must have Owner, Admin, or Editor - can share permissions to the item in order to share it. Similarly, to share a workspace, you'll need Owner, Admin, or Editor - can share permission to the workspace.
NOTE: Only Owners and Admins can share dashboards.
Here's how you can give someone access to an item that's located in a workspace:
When items and workspaces are shared, you'll see the Shared to Sheet, Report, or dashboard via workspace icon and the
Shared to Sheet, Report, or dashboard only icon next to the permission levels in the Collaborators section of the sharing form. These icons can help you distinguish how the item has been shared with the various collaborators.
If you are the sheet Owner or have Admin-level sharing permissions, you can ensure that anyone shared to your sheet sees the sheet as you've intended by applying a default view and filter. Set a default view, for example, for newly shared collaborators to open a sheet directly to Card View with a filter applied to show only high priority tasks.
You'll need to create a saved filter before setting a default filter. For more information about creating filters, see our article on Using Filters to Show or Hide Sheet Data.
To set a default view on your sheet:
You can ensure that a collaborator is looking at an item with the same view and filters applied by sending them the URL from the address bar of your browser. (Learn more about views.)
NOTE: Default View settings don't apply to the Mobile App. Users accessing a sheet from the App will be defaulted to Grid View.
The item owner and collaborators with Admin access to the item have the ability to remove others or change their permission levels. Editors may also have this ability if they were given permission to share the item when they were invited.
In some cases, you may attempt to open an item and will see a message similar to the following: "The item is not currently available - it may have been deleted or your permission may have been removed from it."
Common reasons for seeing this message include:
If you'd like to access a sheet, report, dashboard, or workspace that isn't shared to your email address, click the Request Access From Owner button in the message. This will send an email to the item or workspace owner with a confirmation link they can click to select a sharing permission level for your email address. Once the item or workspace owner has completed this process you’ll be able to access the item (either use the link you received or find the sheet in Smartsheet directly).