Notion vs. Smartsheet vs. Workplace from Meta (discontinued)

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.

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

Well suited: - leadership communication. When our CEO posts a video to all company - it always gets the highest engagement - recognition/achievements posts - live streams for education, knowledge sharing - we are a company of 12000 associates and there is no other corporate channel for us to gather more than 500 people in one place. Less appropriate: - sharing some very targetted messages - it's impossible to do at Workplace without creating a group. So we use email channel for such targetted communications - instant communication like in a chat (probably it's less appropriate in our specific case because we use MS Teams for such quick communication instead of WP chats)

Incentivized

• I love that you can create nested pages, allowing for separate sections to organize information as needed.
• I appreciate the convenience of effortlessly uploading images to any section.
• I appreciate that when adding links, you can embed them so the website displays directly on the page.

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

• Bring groups of people together to share info, stories, updates, etc.
• The chat app is pretty decent.
• Workplace Live is a good large-group meeting broadcast platform.
• It's pretty intuitive to use for anyone who's used Facebook.
• It provides different levels of "security" for groups, allowing you to have open, closed, and "secret" groups.
• It's easy to paste images into your posts and comments, without having to necessarily go through the process of saving an image as a file, etc.
• It has search capabilities for finding old information.
• It's available for both desktop/laptop and mobile devices.
• It's secured to allow only those within the company to see company-related info (but it also has a few inter-company groups, which can be useful, too).
• Workplace Chat has the ability to set it to Do Not Disturb.
• You can set notifications, including email notifications, if you want to be alerted to new activity in your groups, etc.
• You can use Markdown to format your text

Incentivized

• 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.

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

• It would be helpful if a review confirmation checkbox was able to be placed by files that needed to be read or reviewed. Along the same line, approve, review again, etc. would be helpful checkboxes to add by files, proposals.
• The layout is clean but suffers a bit from the center column width with two sidebars and a lot of empty space. It almost looks like a going out of business sale retail store where you notice the empty shelves. Workplace feels a bit bare at times. I think some good design modifications can help. Now on mobile, it is a great layout. I am addressing specifically the desktop browser login.
• An admin control dashboard would be really effective and even more so with more users on the platform.

Incentivized

We're too settled in the ecosystem and we have no major complaints with it. No reason to move unless you have a burning pain point

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

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.

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

Having to download multiple apps just to use the tool is very cumbersome. Facebook would have make this better by wrapping it in as a main feature within their app, but having to use multiple apps to see discussions and walls is so frustrating.

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

Workplace by Facebook is an excellent fit in respect of support and documentation. It has excellent tutorials and documentation, as well. The UI and UX are already great as it is developed and maintained by Facebook, so most of the times, there is no need for any support or documentation.

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.

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.

Incentivized

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

Workplace by Facebook is so much more than just a project management tool like Basecamp or Slack. The ability to disseminate information to employees is easier and better with Workplace by Facebook. It can also be used for informal messaging and sharing of information. It combines the best features of both with the same look and feel as Facebook.

Incentivized

• It has streamlined our processes across various teams to all work from a signle source of truth
• Maintaining this source of truth is a full time job
• It has reduced our overall tool set by completely eliminating two other softwares we were paying for

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

• We can meet the project times, that with the communication in real time.
• We provide solutions to our suppliers in a reliable and efficient manner.
• When a business can save time and at the same time respond to the demands of customers, this translates into greater market capture of action for the company.

Incentivized