---
title: Smartsheet Dashboard Filters Need a New Table Structure
description: Smartsheet’s new chart builder and dashboard filters need your KPI data in a different shape. Learn how long tables let you filter daily RAG charts
image: https://www.adrienautomation.com/hubfs/Smartsheet-chart-builder-new-and-legacy-stacked-chart-filter.png
---

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# Smartsheet Dashboard Filters Need a New Table Structure

![Adrien Leduc](https://www.adrienautomation.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Photo%20profil.jpg?width=48&height=48&name=Photo%20profil.jpg)

 Adrien Leduc

October 14, 2026

Smartsheet recently released new dashboard features, including a new chart builder (officially called Enhanced charts) and dashboard filters.

The filters are a great addition. A dashboard admin adds a filter panel, and viewers can narrow everything down to a specific team, status or time period without anyone maintaining a separate dashboard for each audience. There is one catch, though. Filters only work with charts built in the new builder, and charts built in the legacy builder need to be rebuilt before they can use them.

That rebuild is not always a like-for-like job. The new builder works differently from the legacy one, and stacked charts in particular are set up differently, so expect to rebuild your charts rather than simply convert them.

### The daily KPI dashboard, revisited

A few months ago I wrote about [how to build a dashboard of your daily KPIs](https://www.adrienautomation.com/blog/how-to-track-kpi-history-day-by-day-in-smartsheet?hsLang=en) so you can track how they evolve day by day over the year. That approach still works, particularly with the legacy chart builder. But if you want to take advantage of the new dashboard filters, you may need to structure your data differently.

Funnily enough, the answer is in another article I wrote: [Long Tables: The Smartsheet Table Structure That Makes Formulas Easier](https://www.adrienautomation.com/blog/long-tables-smartsheet-structure-that-makes-formulas-easier?hsLang=en).

### The old structure: a wide table

To build daily charts, I used to recommend a table like this:

| Date | Count of Red | Count of Amber | Count of Green |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 01/01/26 | 5 | 18 | 20 |

 

Each RAG status gets its own column, and each day adds one row. It is compact, easy to read, and works well for a chart with one series per column.

### The new structure: a long table

Now, instead of counting the three RAG statuses in three columns, you count them in three rows, with two columns: RAG and Count. It looks like this:

| Date | RAG | Count |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 01/01/26 | Red | 5 |
| 01/01/26 | Amber | 18 |
| 01/01/26 | Green | 20 |

 

Each day now produces three rows instead of one, so the table grows faster. In exchange, you get something the wide table can’t offer. 

### Why this matters for filters

A dashboard filter needs a column to act on. In the wide table, “Red”, “Amber” and “Green” are only column headers, so there is nothing to filter by. A viewer can’t ask to see only Red.

In the long table, RAG is a column with real values in it. That means viewers can filter by status, by date range, or by both together. The same chart you had before keeps working, and the filters sit on top of it.

### Building the chart in the new builder

With the long table in place, you can recreate the same chart as before in the new builder:

1. Add a new chart widget to your dashboard and select your metrics sheet as the data source and Column for the chart type.
2. Put Date on the horizontal axis.
3. Count of RAG as the vertical axis.
4. RAG as the Group by parameter.
5. Stacked as display style.

![Smartsheet-new-chart-builder-stacked-chart](https://www.adrienautomation.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Smartsheet-new-chart-builder-stacked-chart.png?width=1870&height=956&name=Smartsheet-new-chart-builder-stacked-chart.png)

Then add a filter panel to the dashboard and pick the same data source. The filter will apply to every chart and report widget powered by that source. Filters apply per data source, so if your dashboard also contains widgets from other sheets, those won’t be affected by a filter on this one.

![Smartsheet-new-chart-builder-stacked-chart-filter](https://www.adrienautomation.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Smartsheet-new-chart-builder-stacked-chart-filter.png?width=2824&height=1282&name=Smartsheet-new-chart-builder-stacked-chart-filter.png)

### Why a metrics sheet?

You might wonder why we chart from a metrics sheet at all. Smartsheet’s own guidance for filters leans toward sourcing widgets from your main sheet or report.

The reason is that daily KPIs are a history, not a current state. Your main sheet only shows how things stand today, so it can’t tell you what the counts were last Tuesday. To track how your KPIs evolve day by day, each day’s counts need to be recorded somewhere, and that has to be a separate sheet. That is the metrics sheet.

This is exactly why the long table structure matters. Because the metrics sheet is a separate, purpose-built table, you control its layout. By making every field you might want to filter on (date, RAG, and anything else, such as team or project) a proper column, you give the dashboard filters what they need to work with.

### Wrapping up

The new chart builder and dashboard filters make Smartsheet dashboards far more interactive, but they reward data that is structured with filtering in mind. If your daily KPI tracker uses one column per status, switching to a long table is an important change that unlocks filtering on the new builder. If you need help with that, make sure to contact me using the form below.

 

## Keep reading

### [![](https://www.adrienautomation.com/hs-fs/hubfs/OGSM-report-system-smartsheet-dashboard.png?width=3000&height=1500&name=OGSM-report-system-smartsheet-dashboard.png) Why Your Strategy Gets Forgotten by February, and How an OGSM System Keeps It Alive](https://www.adrienautomation.com/blog/why-your-strategy-gets-forgotten-by-february-and-how-an-ogsm-system-keeps-it-alive?hsLang=en)

### [![](https://www.adrienautomation.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Why-Your-Team-Still-Has-Manual-Work-Despite-Buying-Smartsheet.png?width=2000&height=1000&name=Why-Your-Team-Still-Has-Manual-Work-Despite-Buying-Smartsheet.png) Why Your Team Still Has Manual Work Despite Buying Smartsheet](https://www.adrienautomation.com/blog/why-your-team-still-has-manual-work-despite-buying-smartsheet?hsLang=en)

 © 2026 Adrien Leduc · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrienleduc/)

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