Likelihood to Recommend 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 Traffic is suitable for most agencies, regardless of size. You don't need to use all of the features in order to get good results. And it can be linked to Maconomy which is useful for larger agencies. We have around 80 employees and it works great.
Read full review Pros 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 The time sheet area is really good - it's easy to drag and drop and fill in time sheets with allocated tasks quickly, which makes it more likely that people will actually do it! It's invaluable to be able to see the time spent on different tasks across a job - both for keeping track of ongoing projects, but also to plan resourcing and costs for the next time. It's useful to be able to mark parts of a job as 'complete' before the full job is finished - this makes it easier to track which tasks still have to be finished, and makes sure that people are tracking time to the correct task within the job. Job templates are very useful to make sure the same set of tasks is added to each job automatically. Read full review Cons 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 I would like to be able to colour code my clients, so I can see at a snapshot what projects staff are working on. I would like to be able to colour code staff holidays, public holidays so I can easily see what resources I have available. As an administrator, I can't see at a glance the actual time spent on a task work or comments a user has logged. 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 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 Deltek TrafficLIVE was the pre-existing system when I joined the company. When we decided to purchase a new system, we considered a number of options such as
Kimble PSA, Oracle NetSuite & Mavenlink. We decided to go ahead with
Kimble PSA because we felt that as a package, it provided all the functionality we need against its competitors. It had far more functionality than TrafficLIVE and was more suited to the scale of our business.
Read full review Return on Investment 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 Much more clarity as to how much time each different type of brief should take to complete as we can back reference as to how long it took last season. It has lead to better customer service. We can visibly demonstrate where we are with jobs and who has been assigned. In the past verbally confirming the different stages did not always convince the project leaders that they were being given the actual real time. From the Studio users point of view it has empowered them to manage their time more efficiently. If they receive a request to move onto another job their calendars can be reviewed to see if they are available or not. Read full review ScreenShots Deltek TrafficLIVE Screenshots