Applies to

Smartsheet
  • Business
  • Enterprise

Capabilities

Who can use this capability

The Owner and shared collaborators with a license and Admin access to a sheet, report, or dashboard can use the publish feature.

System Admins on Business and Enterprise accounts can limit or disable publishing for all users on the account. For information about how to do this, see Global account settings.

Publish a sheet, report, or dashboard

 Share Smartsheet items with people who don’t have Smartsheet accounts or without sharing underlying sheets.

PLANS

  • Smartsheet
  • Business
  • Enterprise

Permissions

The Owner and shared collaborators with a license and Admin access to a sheet, report, or dashboard can use the publish feature.

System Admins on Business and Enterprise accounts can limit or disable publishing for all users on the account. For information about how to do this, see Global account settings.

Publishing a sheet, report, or dashboard generates a unique URL that anyone can access without logging into Smartsheet and an iframe code that you can embed within the source code of a website, to display the sheet or report.

Items you publish are dynamic, so the data displayed is always up to date. 

You can stop publishing at any time. When you do this, the published version of the sheet, report, or dashboard is no longer accessible. 

Using this feature has the potential to expose sensitive data outside of your company. To share a link in a more limited way, use the Access Control (see below) or copy and share the link that’s available in the sheet properties, report properties, or dashboard properties window. The link available from the properties window is secure and only accessible to shared collaborators.

When publishing a Smartsheet item, you can use the Access Control to limit access to the item. 

  • Available to anyone with the link.
    • Creates a link that allows anyone with access to it to view or edit the content or your link.
  • Only available to users in the owner’s account.
    • Creates a secure link that requires the user to log into Smartsheet before being able to view the content of your link. Only users who were added to your Smartsheet account can view the content.
    • This doesn’t include external users who are shared as a collaborator to your Smartsheet item or to a workspace where your item is stored. For more information, see Sharing.

Enterprise and up customers have an additional Access Control option:

  • Only available to users who are shared to the item.
    • Creates a secure link that requires the user to log into Smartsheet before being able to view the content of your link. Only users who are shared to the item can access it; others see an error page.

Users in your Smartsheet account include licensed or non-licensed users that would be listed as active users in your System Administrator’s Admin Center. For more information, see User management.

Save your item before you publish it; the last saved view is the published view. 


Publish a sheet

  1. Select Publish on the right Feature Bar.
     
  2. Select the slider under one or more of the publish options and set it to ON. 

    When you set the slider to ON, a link to the sheet is created and a window displays, allowing you to tune the published experience further

    The different options for publishing a sheet are:
     
    • Read Only - HTML: Best option if you want a lightweight, quick-loading view of your sheet data. It provides a simple, read-only view of the sheet data, without the option to switch to Calendar or Gantt View. Attachments and comments aren’t available, and indented rows can’t be collapsed/expanded.
    • Read Only - Full: This option has a richer user interface than Read Only - HTML, enabling viewers to open row attachments and comments, and collapse or expand hierarchies.

      Use the Access Control options to control whether the link will be accessible by anyone or only by licensed and unlicensed users in the sheet owner's account.

      Use the Publish Settings options to set the default view to Grid (Gantt) or Calendar. Visitors to the published sheet can switch between views as they like.
    • Edit by Anyone: This option enables anyone to open the sheet and make changes as if they have Editor-level sharing permissions to it.

      Use the Access Control options to control whether the link will be accessible by anyone or only by users in the sheet owner's account.

      Use the Publish Settings options to set the default view to Grid (Gantt), Card, or Calendar. Visitors to the published sheet can switch between views as they like.
    • iCal (Calendar): This option enables anyone to add dates from the sheet to their non-Smartsheet calendar. For more information, see Publishing a Smartsheet calendar to iCal.
       
  3. To share the URL and embed code for the sheet, use the keyboard to copy the URL or code from the window and paste it into an email message or web page. (For tips about copying and pasting in Smartsheet, see Using copy and paste.)

Publish a report

Use publish to display a report in a view-only format that allows viewers to open row attachments and comments, highlight changes, and print the report.

To publish a report:

  1. Select Publish on the right Feature Bar.
  2. Select on the slider to turn publishing ON. The Read Only - Full - Publish Links window appears.
  3. Choose the attributes that you want:
    • Use the Access Control options to control whether the link is accessible by anyone or only by users in the sheet owner's account.
    • Use the Publish Settings options to set the default view to Grid (Gantt), Calendar, or Card View. Visitors to the published sheet can switch between views as they like.
  4. To share the URL and embed code for the sheet, use the keyboard to copy the URL or code from the window and paste it into an email message or web page. (For tips about copying and pasting in Smartsheet, see Using copy and paste.)

The published report displays the same results as the person who published it sees in Smartsheet. If the publisher's sharing access is removed from the report, publishing turns off and the report owner gets notified.


Publish a dashboard

The Publish option displays a dashboard in a read-only format. Viewers of the published dashboard can use shortcuts in the dashboard and use any widget interactions setup for the dashboard.

To publish a dashboard:

  1. In the top left of the dashboard, go to File > Publish.
  2. Select the slider to turn publishing ON.
  3. Use the Access Control options to control whether the link is accessible by anyone or only by users in the dashboard owner's account.
  4. To share the URL and embed code for the sheet, use the keyboard to copy the URL or code from the window and paste it into an email message or web page. (For tips about copying and pasting in Smartsheet, see Using copy and paste.)

A published dashboard automatically refreshes once every 10 minutes. This behavior can’t be customized or deactivated.


Stop publish or edit publish options

  1. For sheets and reports, select Publish on the right Feature Bar. For dashboards, select File > Publish.
  2. Do either of the following:
    • To turn off publish and discontinue access to the sheet from the published links or iframe code, select the slider under each enabled publish option to set it to OFF.
    • To make a change, select Get Link next to the publish option you want to change.
Was this article helpful?
YesNo