Smartsheet Bridge: Column ID is now accessible in the new table view

Anyone who uses Smartsheet Bridge knows this: if you wanted a column ID, you had to run a Get Sheet module first. There was no shortcut. You built the module, ran the workflow, and dug the ID out of the output.

Well no longer. Smartsheet has just released a new feature to see and copy the column ID. Directly from the sheet. Right-select any column header in table view, open Column properties, and the ID is right there.

This is a genuinely useful addition for Bridge and API users. It completes a trio of identifiers you can now get your hands on without touching a workflow or a script: the Sheet ID, the Row ID, and now the Column ID.

One thing worth flagging: this only works in table view. If your organisation is still on grid view for a given sheet, you will not see the option. Smartsheet has been rolling table view out as the default experience, but grid view is still around, so check which view you are in before you go hunting for the menu.

Does this mean you can skip the Get Sheet module?

I would still run it. Here is why:

Get Sheet was never just a vehicle for column IDs. It happened to be the only way to get them, so that became its most visible use case, but the module returns far more than IDs. It gives you the full structure of the sheet, including column types, options for drop-down and contact list columns, and the current state of the sheet itself. Being able to copy a column ID from the sheet does not replace any of that.

The part that actually matters: references, not hard-coded values

Here is the real reason to keep Get Sheet in your workflow. When you pull a column ID out of Get Sheet, you are not just getting a static value. You are getting a reference you can point at dynamically, which means you do not have to hard-code that ID anywhere in your Bridge workflow.

Why does that matter? Because it keeps your workflows flexible.

Say you build a Bridge workflow triggered by a cell update on a specific sheet. It works well. A few months later, you discover the exact same use case exists on a different sheet, maybe a different department runs the same process on their own copy of the structure.

If you had hard-coded the column ID from the first sheet, you are stuck. You would need to go find the new column ID (which, fair enough, is now a bit faster thanks to this update), then update every reference to it inside your workflow, one by one, hoping you catch them all.

If you built the workflow using Get Sheet's references instead, you skip all of that. You simply add a new Trigger pointing at the new sheet, and the rest of the workflow adapts, because it was never tied to a fixed ID in the first place. One workflow, reused across sheets, with none of the manual rework.

That is the difference between a workflow that survives change and one that breaks the moment something moves. Copying a column ID from the sheet is a nice convenience for quick checks, debugging, or one-off scripts against the API. But for anything you intend to scale or reuse, references built through Get Sheet are still doing the heavy lifting.

Where this leaves you

Use the new copy ID feature for what it is good at: fast, no-workflow-required access to IDs when you are troubleshooting, documenting a sheet, or working directly against the API. Keep Get Sheet in your Bridge workflows for anything that needs to stay flexible as your sheets, and your organisation, evolve.

That is exactly the kind of system I build using references instead of hard-coded values so your automations keep working as your sheets grow and multiply. Fill in the form below and tell me what you are trying to automate. I will get back to you with how it could work.