Adobe Workfront vs. Microsoft Planner vs. Smartsheet

Workfront enables us to manage all our projects effectively while providing a comprehensive overview of team resources. The Resource Planner helps the team identify their capacity to determine whether they are over- or under-allocated. This information is crucial for project planning and ensuring team members do not experience burnout.

Incentivized

There are a few examples where MS Planner would be suitable for employees at a mature organization. In my opinion, if you have Outlook or Teams, you already have built-in calendars and to-do lists. If you need a project management tool, you have two options: either pay for MS Project or use an alternative tool like Monday, Asana, or Jira. Regardless, their free versions are much more sophisticated than Microsoft's (MS Planner). Any team wishing to put together a halfway-decent project management board will need to look elsewhere, as MS Planner is only suitable for a personal to-do list.

Incentivized

Smartsheet shines for collaboration. When you have multiple people involved with planning events Smartsheet makes it easy to share and collaborate. For instance, multiple people can be in Smartsheet working at the same time. Also setting permissions for exactly those who need to know is quite easy with Smartsheet. For data analytics and general spreadsheet purposes Excel is better but for project management and event planning Smartsheet is superior

Incentivized

• Fosters communication between team members.
• Serves as a virtual "to do list" for me personally - I can track where I am with projects and what there is left to do, and when it's completed.
• Sharing documents between team members that can be updated.

Incentivized

• I love the ability to tag and untag others as needed
• I love the ability to customize the tag labels and that there are so many options
• I love the ability to add comments and it notifies the others tagged in the task
• I love that the task description can be changed as needed without notification to others assigned to the task

Incentivized

• Its hard to overstate the value of familiarity. Being able to use a tool that has some familiarity takes away the time needed to train and orient employees on a new tool and allows an organization to hit the ground running.
• Smartsheet covers most of the basics of a project management tool, the usual tasks, milestones and project viewing options.
• For data viewing, you get multiple data viewing options including a calendar view (good for marketing teams and those who work around scheduling), Kanban, Gaant etc

Incentivized

• It can sometimes be a bit difficult to keep track of multiple projects
• Hard to include people who do not have a Adobe Workfront account
• I wish there were better notifications around when tasks are removed or you are unassigned from a task

Incentivized

• Would be nice to see a calendar view instead of a list view
• Permissions aren't configurable, anyone can delete any task at any time and there is no recycle bin
• Notifications aren't great, you have to be attached as an owner to a task to see comments and be notified of changes, and even then notifications aren't shown for a lot of things

Incentivized

• Smartsheet set up is similar to Excel, yet when you upload an Excel file, things like conditional formatting are lost. Smartsheet has its own conditional formatting, and you have to reinstate the rules. It would be great if those would apply automatically once a file is uploaded
• Some Smartsheet management and access rules can take some tweaking to work properly. This may be a case of offering more info to admins so they can apply these better and with more efficiency

Incentivized

All that I've said already is why. I suppose the clearest way to say it is that at this point? I cannot imagine running the 300+ active projects in eMarketing without AtTask; it simply wouldn't be possible and even more; I wouldn't imagine why we'd try to find an alternative tool when we have one meeting our needs.

It is a very useful tool that brings teams in sync with one another. The integration with other Microsoft products makes it an obvious choice because you don't have to purchase a license for a completely different tool that doesn't have cross-functional capabilities with the software you already use on a daily basis.

Incentivized

It definitely meets our needs as far as organizing and archiving our tasks and files. As we train more staff to view it, I see opportunities for more improvement, which I am sure this program can handle. I look forward to seeing continued improvement from Smartsheet on their capabilities and functionality.

Incentivized

Workfront is overly complex, but it is functional as a tool to keep track of projects. It is a shame that sometimes it takes a lot of clicks to find anything. Workfront is slowly modernizing its interface but at the same time, hides certain information away thus making the experience feels worse.

Incentivized

The board-and-bucket layout makes it easy to organize tasks, track progress, and prioritize work at a glance, even for first-time users. I also appreciate how Planner seamlessly integrates with tools like Teams, Outlook, and SharePoint, enabling users to collaborate, schedule tasks, and access their plans without needing to switch platforms. I also like how it’s accessible not only on desktops, but also on mobile devices.

Incentivized

Smartsheet is very easy to learn. However, while I have been able to pick it easily, Microsoft Excel and Project super users that I have trained on Smartsheet get bogged down in the differences and can find it frustrating. Explaining the differences ahead of time and why Smartsheet is being chosen instead of a different software seems to counteract those reactions

Incentivized

Maintenance is required, but usually after work hours, Some days the proofing tool function is not operational, but this is a new function of the tool that WF is working out. the kinks on. Chrome is the best browser to use the system in and we find Firefox and Explorer lose some view functionality - Gantt Chart, Resource Grid

Incentivized

Workfront's performance has been very good. Everything always feels very fast and snappy in my experience. We have integrated it with custom scripts to create folder structure for media managing our projects. It works very well.

Incentivized

I know that this particular company has it's own Adobe Workfront employee that builds out things they need from the software, and meets with them regularly to troubleshoot. I'm not part of this process, but it's refreshing to see Adobe provide this level of customer service to people, and they're expedient.

Incentivized

I give this rating because it fills a niche in the market. MS Project scares many away from proper task management but there are limited tools our there, especially cloud-based that are mobile-friendly. Smartsheet fills this market gap, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. IT is not fair to compare it to MS Project, but fairer to see what gaps it fills.

Incentivized

It was from my boss, not a rep from AtTask.

The training is very easy to use and you can simply choose the topics included in the course(s) that are most important to your training needs. After each training course, you are tested on what you have learned. If you need a refresher course, they provide Course Catalogs as well as instructor-led courses & workshops.

Most people learn as you go, a lot of this stuff requires trial and error throughout so my suggestion is to provide as much information in the upfront and keep it as simple as possible. You can add other tools and features as you go but everyone should have the basics down so no bad habits can start to develop. Be persistent with everyone, and don't be afraid to correct and talk through steps again so everyone is on the same page

Incentivized

It's absolutely paramount to take a few minutes to actually play with the software. It's nearly impossible to do anything wrong or make a mistake which cannot be fixed easily. Under the help menu is Live Training option. After you familiarize yourself with the commands, watch the live training for some in depth understanding of how to make the software fit your needs perfectly.

It's been a while since I've used another time and resource management platform, but I would say that Adobe Workfront takes the cake. Its newly refreshed user interface is simple to navigate, whereas other platforms can be quite confusing when "drilling down" on a project. Also, Adobe Workfront has features that I have not seen in other platforms, including collaboration capabilities and the ability to upload a document as proof so it can be reviewed for grammar, consistency, formatting, etc., before being presented or sent to a client.

Incentivized

Many areas of the company still use Trello to organize their activities and tasks, but gradually Microsoft Planner must replace the activities. Users are often "attached" to familiar technologies, but Office 365 takes advantage of the more organized use of the tools. This year we will not renew the Trello contract.

Jira and Redmine are much more robust and technologically advanced project management solutions. I enjoy using either when managing a very large project. However, I prefer to use Smartsheet for my smaller to medium sized projects. As for Google Drive - I would say that Google sheets and Smartsheet are almost identical in my opinion when it comes to functionality. Personally I prefer to manage smaller projects via Google Drive, but it is a personal preference!

Incentivized

As I stated earlier, I didn't have to pay for Workfront myself- I'm a user under a large organization. I know it's not cheap to implement, I don't know how the price scales for a small-business, but I do like the product enough that I'm going to look into it in the future for my own company.

Incentivized

We have been using Workfront for about 3 years. During this time they continue to be a very stable project management system. Workfront's overall scalability is able to handle increased loads of work. When using Workfront for a project management tool for the web team, we store documents, images & video's without any issues. They work with their customer's to provide the best project management system in the market today! I highly recommend Workfront for all project management needs. Workfront strives to deliver unique technology solutions to growing companies!

• It will help teams to manage their workflow and impact on the overall productivity.
• Also, one-stop for the higher management to know [the] status [of] all projects in one go - more visibility, comfort tracking.
• Easy to track what is in backlog for the team and if any individual [is] stuck on a particular task.

Incentivized

• In my experience, productivity is negatively impacted because assigning subtasks aren't clear on Microsoft Planner
• Managers aren't able to track direct reports' tasks across multiple boards -- leading to poor visibility for us
• Notifications aren't always sent to inbox, so you rely on people's own project management skills to follow the communication on tasks they're assigned to. In my experience, this leads to missed deadlines impacting customer relationships.

Incentivized

• This has really opened up collaboration across teams. A lot less working in silos.
• It hasn't fully replaced any one tool so it means having to go to another place. Hopefully, we can eliminate a tool or two in the next six months.

Incentivized