Google Calendar is a time-management and scheduling calendar service, from Google, available as part of its productivity tool suite.
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Notion
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Notion aims to present users with an all-in-one workspace — for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases, from Notion Labs in San Francisco.
$5
per month per user
Smartsheet
Score 8.4 out of 10
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Smartsheet is an online project management and collaboration tool. It includes automated alerts, instantaneous updating and sharing across team members, resource management, nested tasks organized in a hierarchy, a Gantt chart view, exportable and automated reports, and integration with email.
I use Google Calendar for my appointments, but I track all my projects in Notion. This keeps my Calendar from being overrun with notes and a million things to track.
Google Drive is great for sharing files with people who do not need a client portal, but I think Notion is …
Jira is a great tool, that is probably more robust than Notion and more scalable. But for a small company (under 50 people) the investment is hard to swallow without a significant revenue stream justifying it. Notion is a perfect low cost option that meets 80% of the …
Notion is the most in depth of all of the above applications. You can make a simple to-do list and share it with other people, or dive deep into formulas and page linking. I appreciate that it does not take a large time to set up like monday.com, but it still offers a huge …
I think it's appropriate for everyone that meets with customers, meets with people within their businesses. I even put my personal calendar on my work calendar. I'm just looking at it every day, so I think everyone could use it.
If you want a customizable solution that can be adapted for just about any scenario, I recommend using Notion. If you need a solution that's easy to share with people outside your organization, Notion is great and allows individual or team permission-setting. If you want a turnkey solution, Notion might not be the best since it requires a fair bit of set-up. There are templates that can be purchased to handle this, but I haven't found them very helpful.
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
Enables users to set their "working hours" and others can see if they are setting up a meetings a moon symbol next to their name to show it is outside of that invitees working hours
Allows you to easily create scheduled tasks directly on your Google Calendar
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
The booking page is really helpful for external people who want to chat with me, but so few people use it, that it makes it more frustrating. The solution exists but nobody is using it. It needs to be highlighted more
You have to switch between email accounts or set up additional calendars to schedule work events vs personal events
integrations with other calendars don't update quickly, so sometimes a coworkers vacation doesn't show up in the calendar until much later
I use Notion on my personal tablet, and unlike on the computer, I have a lot of difficulty editing backgrounds, GIFs, and page dividers. It's not as user-friendly, and often the elements end up cut off or misaligned, which is frustrating.
While the current calendar feature is helpful, I'd love to see more customization options. The Google Calendar style isn't always ideal, especially for tasks without specific times or for ongoing projects that require daily maintenance.
It would be fantastic to have more flexibility in customizing Notion pages. For example, I'd love to create planners with the freedom to add illustration boxes, stickers, or GIFs without being restricted to a fixed layout.
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
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.
The platform itself is pretty user friendly even if you don't have a technical background. You can easily schedule meetings, block out focus time, update your time off, and add meeting notes. The settings are easily mapped out in terms of functionality and if you need help you can easily search for an answer on Google search
Very easy to use (I learned how to use everything on my own) and I was able to set up an entire ecosystem without any courses or other tools. I often say that Notion is like Lego for adults, because there we can use all the available tools to create a multitude of things, from funnels to projects with calculated deadlines and tags.
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
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.
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.
Most of the other services we would use don't have the same integration with other Google services that Google Calendar has. The ability to view and set things from your email is very convenient. So is the ability to have your notifications automatically show up on an Android phone as a reminder.
The company uses both Notion and Trello within the company. Notion is more for North America employees while Trello is used between Operation team overseas and in North America. Sometimes it's a preference of how the tools look like for project management. I would say both Notion and Trello are nice tools and serves our needs.
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!
