Change Management

For more information about plan types and included capabilities, see the Smartsheet Plans page.

As project requirements evolve, deploy change to all sheets, reports, and dashboards within a Control Center portfolio.

Smartsheet Control Center: Make Global Updates to your projects

APPLIES TO

• Smartsheet Advance Package

For more information about plan types and included capabilities, see the Smartsheet Plans page.

RELATED CAPABILITIES

Who can use this capability?

You must have Project Lead access to Smartsheet Control Center to make global updates. For information about Lead access, see the Access Smartsheet Control Center.

Find out if this capability is included in Smartsheet Regions or Smartsheet Gov.

As your project progresses, you may need additional information to keep the project running smoothly. For example, you might want to add an At Risk column, so users can flag tasks that they may miss a deadline.

Global Update types

Before you create and run Global Updates, familiarize yourself with the available Global Update types and their capabilities. Global Updates offers the following options:

• Add New Column: Insert a new column in your template and push it out to all existing projects.
• Modify Existing Column: Modify the column definition of an existing column and update existing data.
• Add Profile Data: Add new Profile Data from the intake sheet into the template and summary sheets.
• Find/Replace: Add or update text/formulas in a specific cell or cell range across all projects.
• Update Reports: Update reports in all projects to match the template.
• Update Dashboards: Update dashboards in all projects to match the template.

Global Updates don't apply to title widgets that link to Smartsheet items. To implement this change, you need to edit the individual dashboard.

Create a new Global Update

1. Log into Control Center, or select it from the App Launcher in Smartsheet.
2. Open the menu and then select the program you want to update.
   
3. In the top left corner, select Manage Program.
4. Select Global Updates>New Update.
5. Select the type of update you want to perform.

When you select an update, the plus sign on the tile changes to a checkmark.

1. Select Next and enter your update details.
2. In the bottom right corner, select Create & Run .

Test and validate your changes

Testing is required.

Select Create & Run to test and validate the proposed update against active projects and sheets.

The test creates a temporary copy of a project, ensuring you don’t apply changes until you’re certain you want them.

On the Test Global Update page, select a project and then select Apply Test at the bottom of the page.

Hover over the Success message to see an update summary.

1. Select Open Test to review the test sheet, report, or dashboard and confirm the test updates.

To edit the update, select Close to close the test, make your changes, and run the test again.

Select Close to return to the Update Summary page to test the update on additional projects . Select Test Update, and select the project to test. Do this as many times as you like until you're confident about your changes.

1. Once you’ve confirmed your update works as desired, close the test and return to the Test Global Update page.
2. Select Confirm to go to the Update Summary page.

Confirm the results and apply the update

You have one last chance to review and confirm the proposed changes and select where you want updates applied.

1. Review the Update Summary page and verify your updates.
2. Select Apply Update.
3. On the Apply Update page, select the projects you want to update.

If you want to update your templates, check Apply update to the base project template(s).

1. Select Apply. You get a notice telling you the changes are permanent. Select Yes to complete the update.

Global Updates remain on the Global Updates page. You can run them whenever you want. Select the update and run it as above.

Edit an existing Global Update

To update an existing Global Update:

1. Log into Control Center, or select it from the App Launcher in Smartsheet.
2. Open the menu and then select the program you want to update.
3. In the top left corner, select Manage Program.
4. Select Global Updates>New Update.
5. Locate the Global Update you want to change, hover over the three-dot icon (to the left of the update name), and select Edit.
6. Make your changes, then select Update & Run to test and validate your changes as explained above.

For answers to common questions related to Global Updates and Smartsheet Control Center generally, see Smartsheet Control Center FAQ.

Control Center Global Updates: Dashboards

APPLIES TO

• Smartsheet Advance Package

For more information about plan types and included capabilities, see the Smartsheet Plans page.

Use Global Updates when you have made the following changes to a dashboard template:

• Updated colors or branding on the dashboard
• Revisions to dashboard widgets
• Widget layout
• New or deleted widgets

Global Updates don’t apply to title widgets that link to Smartsheet items. You need to edit the individual dashboard to implement this change.

How to use Global Updates: Dashboards

Update the dashboard template

In Smartsheet, go to the blueprint source folder and make your changes directly to the dashboard template.

• Modify existing widgets
• Add new widgets
• Remove existing widgets
• Update widget layout

Create a Global Update

1. In Control Center, select the program you want to work with.
2. At the top of the screen, select Manage Program and then select Global Updates.
3. Choose New Update and then select Update Dashboards.
4. Follow the instructions in the Update Dashboard wizard.

Name the update after what it does, for example, Move budget widget.

1. At the bottom of the screen, select Create & Run or select Close to save the Global Update without running it.

Apply the Global Update

When you run the update, Control Center searches each project to find the dashboard that matches your dashboard template by either ID or name. It also shows you projects that don’t have a matching dashboard, either because a match wasn’t found or the dashboard wasn’t included when the project was originally created. You can add the newly edited dashboard to those projects when you run the update.

1. Review the dashboards.
   Projects selected for updates are sorted as follows:
   • Dashboards matched to current template ID: These projects contain dashboards created from the dashboard template in the blueprint source folder.
   • Dashboards matched to current template name: These projects contain dashboards that have the same name as the dashboard template in the blueprint source folder.
   • No matching dashboards found: Select Choose Dashboard to select a dashboard to update or to add the dashboard to the project.
     
2. Select Apply to update all the project dashboards.
   
3. Review the results. Warning indicators show dashboards with update issues. Hover over the warning icon to learn more.

Global Updates rebuilds your entire dashboard and relinks widgets to the reports and sheets every time you run an update. Changes aren’t reversible, so run the update on one project and check the results before you run it on all your projects.

Global Updates for dashboards currently don’t update widgets with the sheet summary.

Global Updates: Dashboards best practices

When building your dashboard templates for use with Control Center, it’s important to structure your source data in a way that avoids potential issues with Global Updates.

Avoid duplicate and blank values in the Primary column

Data in the Primary column is used to identify the first and last row for the range of a chart or metric widget, even if you haven’t included this column as a part of your data range. Avoid using your Primary column in widget data ranges.

If duplicate or blank values are found, the widget breaks when you run a Global Update.

Use one of the following options to structure your source data:

1. To avoid duplicate values, use a row naming scheme. For example, name your Primary column rows numerically (1, 2, 3, etc.). This way, you avoid any duplicate values in the Primary column.
2. Add hierarchy to manage duplicate values. This is helpful if the Primary column must be used for data ranges in widgets. See the following example:

In this example, the Primary column contains duplicate values (Very High, High, etc.). By using hierarchy, issues resulting from duplicate values can be avoided when running Global Updates. This is because the lookup for the Primary column returns the parent row and the child row.

With this method, it’s still possible to have duplicate values if you have two or more parent rows with the same name, and child rows with the same name under those separate parent rows.

Make sure reports used for templates contain sample data

If you use a report in a chart widget for your dashboard templates and has no results to create a chart from, it doesn’t map correctly when you provision your projects. Make sure you have at least one data point in your report template.

Make sure cells referenced in template sheets have contained data

Errors related to missing data can occur if the referenced cells from a template sheet have never contained any data. To avoid this, ensure that your template sheets have cell history by right-clicking the cell and selecting View Cell History.

Make changes directly to the dashboard template.

This is the most reliable method for making sure the dashboard matches your projects, even if you change the name of the dashboard. The dashboards in the project are direct children of the dashboard template in the blueprint source folder. Control Center easily identifies them as such and makes changes.

Troubleshoot updates to dashboard widgets

Widgets pull data from sheets and reports. The best way to avoid trouble with them is to make sure the sources feeding the widget are consistent and up to date.

If a widget on a project dashboard doesn’t work correctly after an update, check the following:

If a report or sheet is deleted from the project, the widget can’t find the data it needs.

The same error can happen if a widget refers to a report or sheet that was added to the project later, or if the item wasn’t created because it was optional.

If the Primary column value changes during the project, it no longer matches the template and the widget won’t find the data.

The update locates the cells by matching the column name and value in the primary column with the sheet template. If matches can’t be found, the widget has missing data.

For Global Updates to work well, don’t reference data in the Primary column. The Primary column should contain the name of the metric, and the data should be in other columns.

• Running a Global Update on a blueprint dashboard that isn't wide canvas may cause widgets to be left-aligned in existing projects after the update.
• To correct the alignment, convert the blueprint dashboard to use wide canvas and then run the Global Update on the dashboard again.
• You can also manually adjust the widgets and center-align them. However, if you run a Global Update, they will be left-aligned again.