Clarity needed on using the contact list column type in a form

Jaye Casciano

Hi all,



Seeking clarity on the contact list column type for a form we use to have information submitted to our team by other employees. What I would like to end up with is a sort of "automated" contact list that pulls every name on our Enterprise account. Is that a possibility? The biggest issue for us and using forms to capture the values for "Marketing lead" and "Communications specialist" are that we often forget to update these lists if an employee is onboarded or offboarded, so dropdown lists are often outdated. Something more automated would be much more efficient.



Any thoughts?

Mike Blumenstein

Jaye,

You can specify contact names (contact list column) in a form now, similar to building a dropdown list. The problem with accessing the full company list is some companies using Smartsheet today will have close to 90k users in their list. That would be a LOT of scrolling to pick the right person! Let me know if the Contact list in Webforms (new feature justreleased Tuesday the 30th) works for you.

Jaye Casciano

Thanks for that, Mike - and of course, I am thinking from the perspective of only having a department of 50-75 people. Makes sense. I can't quite figure out how to use the new feature; it mentions "preferred contact lists" in the release notes, and that it can be found in the column properties, but it still seems to work the same way as a text column with the exception that the names populate for me and I can check them off as opposed to manually copying them in. Still seems to require the same amount of work - if we add a new user to the Enterprise account, I still need to update the column to include that name so they'll appear on the form.

It would be really cool to have a feature where you could create a Group (perhaps with a limit to how many users are included) and point the column toward only the names in that Group!



Thanks for your help.

Mike Blumenstein

Open your Column Properties for your Contact List column, and on the right choose who you would like to appear in that list. This is also great if you want to limit the users in the list, and lock down the column in the Grid/Calendar/Card view the same way we have allowed restricted choices in the Webforms for the past few years. I was VERY excited for this release.

Jaye Casciano

Thanks Mike! It doesn't help me here, but it does seem useful in other situations. I suppose the difference is that we don't use contacts in the way it's meant - we simply need the contact's name, but don't actually use it in any true "contact" way if that makes sense. Definitely not a Smartsheet fault there. Cheers

J. Craig Williams

Jaye,

If you are looking for the names of the people in your account, talk to your SysAdmin (there will be at least one in your org to handle Smartsheet - sometimes it is the account owner)

Under Account | User Management | More Actions

there is a Download User List (csv)

This will contain all the persons in your account.

Hope this helps.

Craig

Jaye Casciano

Hi Craig! Good to "read" you. I'm one of the SysAdmins and this is exactly what I ended up doing. Will just have to remember to grab the list again every time we on/offboard an employee. Thanks so much for your input! Always appreciated.