Advanced Settings
Establishing a Connection
Smartsheet supports connections via the following authentication methods:
- Using the Personal Access Token
- Using OAuth
Connect using Personal Access Token
Use the personal token to test and to access your own data. To obtain the personal token, follow the steps below:
- Log into Smartsheet.
- Click Account and select Personal Settings.
- Click API Access and use the form to generate new access tokens or manage existing access tokens.
Connect using OAuth
Smartsheet uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, you will need to register an app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties.
However, to access your own account or for testing purposes you can instead set the OAuthAccessToken connection property to the Personal Access Token you get when you create an application.
Using OAuth
Use OAuth to enable other users to access their own data.
Create an App
For this step you need a developer account. You can follow the procedure below to register an app and obtain the OAuth client credentials, the client Id and client secret:
- Log into your Smartsheet developer account and click Account -> Developer Tools -> Create New App.
- Enter a name, description, and other information to be displayed to users when they log in to grant permissions to your app.
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If you are making a desktop application, set the Redirect URL to http://localhost:33333 or a different port number of your choice.
If you are making a Web application, set the Redirect URL to a page on your Web app you would like the user to be returned to after they have authorized your application.
Authenticate to Smartsheet from a Desktop Application
After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:
- OAuthClientId: Set this to the App client id in your app settings.
- OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the App secret in your app settings.
- CallbackURL: Set this to the App redirect URL in your app settings.
- InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken connection property.
When you connect the provider opens the OAuth endpoint in your default browser. Log in and grant permissions to the application. The provider then completes the OAuth process:
- Extracts the access token from the callback URL and authenticates requests.
- Refreshes the access token when it expires.
- Saves OAuth values in OAuthSettingsLocation to be persisted across connections.
Authenticate to Smartsheet from a Web Application
To obtain the access token, set the following connection properties:
- OAuthClientId: Set this to the App client id in your app settings.
- OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the App secret in your app settings.
When connecting via a Web application, or if the provider is not authorized to open a browser window, you need to exchange a verifier code for the OAuthAccessToken:
- Call GetOAuthAuthorizationURL. The stored procedure returns the URL to the OAuth endpoint.
- Log in and authorize the application. You are redirected back to the callback URL.
- Extract the verifier code from the "code" query string parameter of the CallbackURL and call GetOAuthAccessToken.
To make requests to Smartsheet, set OAuthAccessToken. When the access token expires, call RefreshOAuthAccessToken. Given a refresh token as input, it returns a valid OAuth access token.
Customizing the SSL Configuration
By default, the provider attempts to negotiate SSL/TLS by checking the server's certificate against the system's trusted certificate store. To specify another certificate, see the SSLServerCert property for the available formats to do so.
Connecting Through a Firewall or Proxy
HTTP Proxies
To connect through the Windows system proxy, you do not need to set any additional connection properties. To connect to other proxies, set ProxyAutoDetect to false.
In addition, to authenticate to an HTTP proxy, set ProxyAuthScheme, ProxyUser, and ProxyPassword, in addition to ProxyServer and ProxyPort.
Other Proxies
Set the following properties:
- To use a proxy-based firewall, set FirewallType, FirewallServer, and FirewallPort.
- To tunnel the connection, set FirewallType to TUNNEL.
- To authenticate, specify FirewallUser and FirewallPassword.
- To authenticate to a SOCKS proxy, additionally set FirewallType to SOCKS5.
Troubleshooting the Connection
To show provider activity from query execution to network traffic, use Logfile and Verbosity. The examples of common connection errors below show how to use these properties to get more context. Contact the support team for help tracing the source of an error or circumventing a performance issue.
- Authentication errors: Typically, recording a Logfile at Verbosity 4 is necessary to get full details on an authentication error.
- Queries time out: A server that takes too long to respond will exceed the provider's client-side timeout. Often, setting the Timeout property to a higher value will avoid a connection error. Another option is to disable the timeout by setting the property to 0. Setting Verbosity to 2 will show where the time is being spent.
- The certificate presented by the server cannot be validated: This error indicates that the provider cannot validate the server's certificate through the chain of trust. If you are using a self-signed certificate, there is only one certificate in the chain.
To resolve this error, you must verify yourself that the certificate can be trusted and specify to the provider that you trust the certificate. One way you can specify that you trust a certificate is to add the certificate to the trusted system store; another is to set SSLServerCert.