What new features do you want to see in Forms?

Hey!
We run a form-building service at FormCrafts (https://formcrafts.com/) and have been considering building a native integration for Smartsheet.
I'd love to get some feedback and suggestions on what people are looking for that's missing in Smartsheet forms.
Some ideas we have so far:
- Being able to add custom text, images, and such on the form
- A more powerful dropdown field - limit selections, add images to options
- More powerful conditional logic. Maybe use logic to send emails, trigger redirects?
- Restrict form access by password
- Use math calculations in forms
- Create multi-step forms
- Allow form to update an existing row (is this already possible?)
I'd love to hear some thoughts and suggestions.
Comments
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coby ✭✭✭✭
We have a big issue that Smartsheet only allows a maximum of (8) conditional logic branches for each field. We have a complex form we are looking to implement that would need dozens of branches for each field. Going in the direction of jsonschema form on an external site that sources the schema from Smartsheet API data but would be sweet if there was an easier way.
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skarkhoff ✭✭
All of your ideas are great! I'd love to see something that could filter dropdown options based on a previous response, currently I have to use 2 columns and combine using a formula.
Being able to format text and add images would be helpful as well.
Also, being able to select calendar options for date selections (i.e. exclude weekends, or only show dates over 2 weeks out, etc.)
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Nish ✭
我们没有限制你ca的数量的分支n have for a field, or the number of fields it can affect. We have tons of users who have 50+ logic steps, each with their own set of 'actions'.
I am curious though - why does the form require dozens of branches for each field? If you have more info I'd love to see ways it can be done more easily.
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Nish ✭
We have the features that allow text and images, and the ability to customize the date field.
We don't have a feature where you can edit the options list of a dropdown field based on a selection. Our users usually create two dropdown fields in this case and show the one with the correct option set via logic.
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coby ✭✭✭✭
Could go into more detail if you wanted to discuss further. Looking at your business model/service it looks solid, but I guess we are looking for a more malleable solution.
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Melitta ✭✭✭✭
We use forms to collect information from specific people in roles at the university. We don't have an enterprise license so - there may be some things that are precluded due to that.
2, 3) I'd love a more powerful dropdown field and conditional logic.
4) I'd have some questions about the restrict form access by password. I can see where that would be helpful but right now, getting everyone on board with what we're building - that people don't have to log in to use the form is important.
6) Multi step forms? YES!
7) And if the form could update an existing row - sounds complicated to implement but I would love that.
Thanks
Melitta
- Being able to add custom text, images, and such on the form
- A more powerful dropdown field - limit selections, add images to options
- More powerful conditional logic. Maybe use logic to send emails, trigger redirects?
- Restrict form access by password
- Use math calculations in forms
- Create multi-step forms
- Allow form to update an existing row (is this already possible?)
-
Nish ✭
Thanks for the feedback! And yes, of course, requiring an access code for the form would be an optional feature.
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Nish ✭
Yes, I like to know more about your use-case. We are trying to make FormCrafts work with varied requirements, and it would help to know about your workflow. We can trade feedback - you can email me at nish at ncrafts dot net.
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Mark Salamon ✭✭
I have been struggling with some similar requirement re form security and came up with a solution that partly fits the bill.
It would be great to have a true password requirement in order to access a form, to ensure that not just anyone can complete it. But, obviously, SS does not support this yet.
Instead, do the following:
1 - Create a sheet and corresponding form. In the sheet add a Password column (simple text) and also add that to the form as a required field.
2 -形式,使电动汽车的展示ery other field conditional on the value of the Password column matching a specific value, by using conditional logic. Optionally, add a description to the form or field that explains what the Password is used for.
3 - Create a copy of the sheet.
4 - Create a rule in the original sheet to copy a record to the copy sheet if the password matches that same value.
5 - Share the password value separately with the people who need to access the form.
This approach will NOT stop a user from completing the form, but without the password they will not be able to fill out any fields except for password itself. That's the reason to have a copy of the sheet, so that you can use the copy to limit the records to ones where the user had the password and completed the rest of the form.
If you have an existing sheet, then make a copy of that sheet, base the form off of the copy and when a record has the right password, copy the record to the existing sheet.
Note that you can create different forms for different groups of users, with different passwords (and possibly different fields available to each group), and share each form link and password with each group. You can store the passwords in its a separate sheet, identifying which group of users it corresponds to (Sales, Marketing, Clients, etc.) and insert that group identifier in the sheet via VLOOKUP.
If a password gets shared too broadly, you can alter the form to require a different password value and reshare that to the identified recipients.
Categories
I'll answer what I can and shout out to @Brian_Richardson<\/a> for back up. <\/p>
#3 -I don't have any experience with Control Center, so sorry, I can't answer those questions<\/p>
-Capturing Approver Names in approval workflows<\/p>
-Translating Employee Ideas from their native tongue to English<\/p>
-Checking FedEx Tracking Status on a sheet's worth of shipments<\/p>
Kelly<\/p>"},{"commentID":373322,"body":"
Hey @Julie Fortney<\/a> !<\/p>
- In general you cannot update reports with bridge or the API, you can only get report information and details. So unless you are able to come up with a different solution you may be out of luck. Although, if this is a control center program, you may be able to use \"Dynamic Reports\" which adds new sheets to reports every time a project is provisioned (and removes as projects are archived). <\/li>
- Maybe using JavaScript in bridge would help, hard to say. <\/li>
- Unfortunately not.. You can not programmatically retrieve a form link (Big functionality gap in my opinion). We have begged Smartsheet to dynamically update forms with control center. Also you can not update the contents of widgets in dashboards with bridge or the api.<\/li>
- You could definitely set up a solution to achieve this. It would involve using a summary sheet in your blueprint where the link to your template sheets is profile data on your summary sheet. From there you can get the sheet id for each project in bridge, loop through them and make updates.<\/li><\/ol>"},{"commentID":373373,"body":"
@Kelly Moore<\/a> thanks for the shout out :-) but I'm not sure I can help more than what's already been posted. <\/p>
There's a fair amount of Smartsheet API methods that are prebuilt into Bridge, but not all of them. So if you're looking at the Bridge documentation for Smartsheet<\/a> integrations and not finding what you need, you can also look at the Smartsheet API documentation<\/a> to see if there's something there to help you out. If you find an API method to use that's not already pre-built as an integration, then you can use the Custom HTTP Call step to directly call the API. You just have to provide the Smartsheet API with an API token, which you can assign to yourself in your Personal Settings.<\/p>
- Because you cannot adjust report filters using the Smartsheet API, you cannot do this with Bridge. Here's the Reports methods<\/a>. You might want to consider a workaround for the process of having reports hand-updated with new job numbers. Perhaps leverage a creation date or flag new items with a checkbox that's cleared once the conditions are met that would cause the project to fall back off the report? You can also explore the \"contact has any of current user\" filter to pick up specific jobs for the viewer?<\/li>
- You could definitely use Bridge to read one sheet on a schedule or trigger, perform calculations using Javascript or the included utilities, and post the results. It may be faster and more stable than a huge number of formulas in Smartsheet, but I'm not 100% sure it would be. I would probably first explore using Data Mesh, which is setup to do this in a much more friendly way. If you don't already use Data Mesh, it's basically a batch index\/match tool. <\/li>
- As Samuel said, there's no API for updating widgets on a dashboard or retrieving a form URL. Also, I tested copying a dashboard and sheet in a common folder, where the form link was embedded in the dash, and unfortunately it does not update the form link. Seems like a gap and would be a good enhancement request. You could potentially work around this by having a common sheet with the form to capture entries, have a dropdown in that form for the project name that you can keep updated with Bridge, do a lookup to the sheet ID that the entry should go to on a sheet that Bridge maintains, and then copy the form responses into the individual project sheets using Bridge. I know that's pretty roundabout.<\/li>
- As Samuel and Kelly said, you can push dropdown updates through Bridge, it works better than Data Shuttle. You wouldn't need to maintain a separate lookup sheet though, if you create a report that contains the dropdown columns across your various created sheets, and then read that report with Bridge, the return from the API includes the source sheet ID and column ID for each report row. You can then leverage that to point Bridge at the right columns across your sheets without having to maintain a separate lookup.<\/li><\/ol>
At Iron Mountain we use Bridge for a variety of use cases, here's the most effective ones:<\/p>
- Dropdown updates. These happen instantly with Bridge, rather than waiting for Data Shuttle to do this on a schedule. We have a handful of dropdowns on different sheets that use Bridge. I'm also working on a workflow that reads three different lists from three different sheets, and combines them into a single dropdown.<\/li>
- Clear a sheet on a schedule, or as part of another Bridge workflow<\/li>
- Integrate with Smartsheet Resource Management: We use SRM to capture project assignments and do billing. Using Bridge I read assignment, project, and user data into Smartsheet sheets for monthly analysis, which triggers Smartsheet to run Pivots, Data Meshes, and put it all together into a dashboard. I also push new projects into RM when approved and provisioned by Control Center. (note - we do this with Bridge rather than with CC because CC links the project for task synchronization, which we're not doing). And we archive RM users when they are flagged by managers.<\/li>
- Integrate with ServiceNow: We run approvals and tracking for Procurement through Smartsheet, then push new catalog Requests into ServiceNow for the Finance team to complete their pieces. We then read back variable data to Smartsheet to track status of the procurement in one spot...Smartsheet.<\/li>
- Integrate with Gitlab: Project Managers identify epic IDs on task rows in the project schedules. Bridge then reads the dates and labels from Gitlab and posts the content into the project schedules on those rows to be used in formulas that drive the task status and dates. We also push project status commentary from Smartsheet to matching epics in Gitlab so that PMs don't have to enter status twice. <\/li>
- Batch read from Gitlab: Currently we export Gitlab data to a Google Sheet and then Data Shuttle it into Smartsheet. Which works ok but is prone to issues with multiple \"hops\" and getting out of sync with column names etc. Plan is to use Bridge instead to directly read the data from Gitlab and post to Smartsheet in one workflow. I'll use a \"control sheet\" that people can post into using a form and indicate which groups and projects they need data from Gitlab.<\/li><\/ul>
Hope that helps (a little). If you're trying to figure out whether you'll find Bridge useful, my best advice would be to decide how much integration you want to do. That's really what Bridge is for IMHO. You can<\/em> use Bridge to do more advanced workflows in Smartsheet but it can be a little tricky, often it's easier to leverage the prebuilt addons like Data Mesh and Data Shuttle in combination with automations to achieve what you're looking for. That said, Bridge is quite powerful and can certainly take your Smartsheet setup to the next level.<\/p>"}]}},"status":{"statusID":3,"name":"Accepted","state":"closed","recordType":"discussion","recordSubType":"question"},"bookmarked":false,"unread":false,"category":{"categoryID":343,"name":"Add Ons and Integrations","url":"https:\/\/community.smartsheet.com\/categories\/apps-and-integrations","allowedDiscussionTypes":["discussion","question"]},"reactions":[{"tagID":3,"urlcode":"Promote","name":"Promote","class":"Positive","hasReacted":false,"reactionValue":5,"count":0},{"tagID":5,"urlcode":"Insightful","name":"Insightful","class":"Positive","hasReacted":false,"reactionValue":1,"count":0},{"tagID":11,"urlcode":"Up","name":"Vote Up","class":"Positive","hasReacted":false,"reactionValue":1,"count":0},{"tagID":13,"urlcode":"Awesome","name":"Awesome","class":"Positive","hasReacted":false,"reactionValue":1,"count":0}],"tags":[{"tagID":369,"urlcode":"bridge-by-smartsheet","name":"Bridge"}]},{"discussionID":108771,"type":"question","name":"Has Smartsheet improved the Workapps notification functionality?","excerpt":"While looking at a Smartsheet Workapp today, I noticed the text highlighted below. It says: \"Automation: You can create automated workflows in Smartsheet to alert people in your app. Learn more\" I was excited to see this because I don't use the Workapp tool since it lacks a way to A) notify users of notifications within…","snippet":"While looking at a Smartsheet Workapp today, I noticed the text highlighted below. It says: \"Automation: You can create automated workflows in Smartsheet to alert people in your…","categoryID":343,"dateInserted":"2023-08-10T01:25:46+00:00","dateUpdated":"2023-08-10T07:34:18+00:00","dateLastComment":"2023-08-10T13:12:38+00:00","insertUserID":13526,"insertUser":{"userID":13526,"name":"Marc Shecter","url":"https:\/\/community.smartsheet.com\/profile\/Marc%20Shecter","photoUrl":"https:\/\/us.v-cdn.net\/6031209\/uploads\/userpics\/7MDG7HO742ML\/nHOVUT0FAH0M1.jpg","dateLastActive":"2023-08-10T15:38:57+00:00","banned":0,"punished":0,"private":false,"label":"✭✭✭✭✭"},"updateUserID":91566,"lastUserID":91566,"lastUser":{"userID":91566,"name":"Genevieve P.","title":"Community Manager","url":"https:\/\/community.smartsheet.com\/profile\/Genevieve%20P.","photoUrl":"https:\/\/us.v-cdn.net\/6031209\/uploads\/userpics\/KHY4Y67W0VRX\/nF76D5N9MFB28.png","dateLastActive":"2023-08-11T17:39:53+00:00","banned":0,"punished":0,"private":false,"label":"Employee Admin"},"pinned":false,"pinLocation":null,"closed":false,"sink":false,"countComments":1,"countViews":27,"score":null,"hot":3383304504,"url":"https:\/\/community.smartsheet.com\/discussion\/108771\/has-smartsheet-improved-the-workapps-notification-functionality","canonicalUrl":"https:\/\/community.smartsheet.com\/discussion\/108771\/has-smartsheet-improved-the-workapps-notification-functionality","format":"Rich","tagIDs":[371,510,514],"lastPost":{"discussionID":108771,"commentID":389996,"name":"Re: Has Smartsheet improved the Workapps notification functionality?","url":"https:\/\/community.smartsheet.com\/discussion\/comment\/389996#Comment_389996","dateInserted":"2023-08-10T13:12:38+00:00","insertUserID":91566,"insertUser":{"userID":91566,"name":"Genevieve P.","title":"Community Manager","url":"https:\/\/community.smartsheet.com\/profile\/Genevieve%20P.","photoUrl":"https:\/\/us.v-cdn.net\/6031209\/uploads\/userpics\/KHY4Y67W0VRX\/nF76D5N9MFB28.png","dateLastActive":"2023-08-11T17:39:53+00:00","banned":0,"punished":0,"private":false,"label":"Employee Admin"}},"breadcrumbs":[{"name":"Home","url":"https:\/\/community.smartsheet.com\/"},{"name":"Get Help","url":"https:\/\/community.smartsheet.com\/categories\/get-help"},{"name":"Add Ons and Integrations","url":"https:\/\/community.smartsheet.com\/categories\/apps-and-integrations"}],"groupID":null,"statusID":3,"image":{"url":"https:\/\/us.v-cdn.net\/6031209\/uploads\/C4YA4UIUZFSF\/image.png","urlSrcSet":{"10":"","300":"","800":"","1200":"","1600":""},"alt":"image.png"},"attributes":{"question":{"status":"accepted","dateAccepted":"2023-08-10T15:39:24+00:00","dateAnswered":"2023-08-10T13:12:38+00:00","acceptedAnswers":[{"commentID":389996,"body":"
The prompt here is to help Workapp Builders use automations in the underlying Smartsheet sheet to send out notifications. There currently isn't a way to build an automation directly in the Workapp, as you noted. I see you created an Idea Post<\/a> around this, thank you!<\/p>
Hey @Corentin Dal Farra<\/a>,<\/p>
The \"One Time Write\" behavior will copy the value from the cell in the intake to the Profile Data<\/a> cell in the project sheet(s); this allows collaborators to update the value within the project sheets unlike the \"Cell Link\" option.<\/p>