Likelihood to Recommend Most of the project management software in existence today is focused on agile/sprint based processes. If your team happens to use Kanban instead, KanbanFlow is one of the best options for tracking work. It's quick to get started and learn and has a manageable feature set that won't overwhelm anyone.
Read full review For teams and users who are very familiar with Excel and its mode of operation, Smartsheet will feel like a walkover. If you have a number of users who use Excel or Google Sheets for their personal project management then you will find this tool to be very useful and somewhat familiar.
Teams that may be used to other project management suites or styles would find Smartsheet a bit challenging to adapt to, as formulas and formatting can be challenging to adapt to.
Read full review Pros Project monitoring with detailed management reports. Keep the team organized, focused on projects and demonstrate your goals in the tool. Simultaneous collaboration of the team in activities. Intuitive and user-friendly interface to use. Ease of learning how to use the tool. Read full review The easy to use dashboard has enabled us get comprehensive view of projects across the entire business. It has streamlined internal communication with ease of sharing information across different teams. Smartsheet automates our workflows, enhances collaboration and ensures there are no data silos. I like that it saves time for us and ensures we spend less time switching between apps. Read full review Cons I'm not sure if it has this or not because I've only been using it for about 6 months but we haven't quite figured out how to archive things. We have lots of data on that main page from Q3 and Q4 of last year but we need to figure out how to get it away from our main page so we can focus on new things this quarter I know when I was first added there were a few things the admin had to do in order to do that. All I remember is that it wasn't simple for them to get me hooked up. They had to do a few steps and then I was granted access. I don't know what exactly but I had to wait. Read full review 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 Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Usability 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
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I really like the simplicity and the subtasks found in KanbanFlow. It seems to be the easiest tool to get clients not using another method to use this without any challenges on their part.
Trello has card dependencies, which is a nice touch.
Trello also has a lot of add-ons, but I find them to be a little glitchy.
Kanban Tool has really nice reporting and analytics.
Read full review 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!
Read full review Return on Investment Creating visibility of the status of all open work items Allowed for self-service ownership of projects by stakeholders Read full review 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. Read full review ScreenShots