Smartsheet - Collaboration made easy
I use Smartsheet very often. Whenever I would have traditionally used Excel, instead I now use Smartsheet as my go-to application whenever …
Starting at $14 per month
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What is Smartsheet?
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.
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Popular Features
- Scheduling (106)8.585%
- Task Management (121)8.484%
- Team Collaboration (117)8.484%
- Gantt Charts (104)8.181%
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Pricing
Individual
$14
Cloud
per month
Business
$25
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Per User / Per Month
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- No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.smartsheet.com/pricing
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- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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What is Smartsheet?
Smartsheet is an online project management and collaboration tool from Smartsheet.inc in Bellevue, Washington. The software has a characteristic spreadsheet like interface but contains the full panoply of features expected of project management and collaboration software, such as automated alerts, instantaneous updating and sharing across team members, resource management facilitating budgeting and task allocation, nested tasks organized in a hierarchy, a Gantt chart view, the ready production of exportable reports (e.g. Excel), and integration with email. Across spreadsheets cells can be linked allowing the creation of master spreadsheets that provide ready summaries or automated reports. Smartsheet's capabilities can be expanded with a multitude of apps (e.g. Dropbox, Google Apps) or integrated into combinatory solutions (e.g. with Salesforce) to tailor fit business needs. It supports full mobile access.
Three tiers cover Smartsheet's pricing options. The Basic level provides core features for small groups of individuals, while the Team level is recommended for groups of up to 50 people and supports more user features, allows multiple sheet creators, and has reporting functions. The Enterprise level is a custom fit tier for groups of greater than 50 individuals or companies, and may include dedicated support personnel if desired.
Three tiers cover Smartsheet's pricing options. The Basic level provides core features for small groups of individuals, while the Team level is recommended for groups of up to 50 people and supports more user features, allows multiple sheet creators, and has reporting functions. The Enterprise level is a custom fit tier for groups of greater than 50 individuals or companies, and may include dedicated support personnel if desired.
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Smartsheet Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Reviewers rate Resource Management highest, with a score of 8.8.
The most common users of Smartsheet are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
Highly usable tool: Users find Smartsheet to be a highly usable tool with a considerable amount of functionality and ease of use. Some users appreciate its user-friendly interface and extensive features.
Effective scheduling and task management: The scheduling aspect of Smartsheet is highly praised as it allows multiple people to work on data simultaneously without locking the sheet. Many users appreciate the ability to set automatic reminders for tasks, even for future dates up to a year ahead.
Excel-like interface: Users appreciate that Smartsheet operates like Excel, making it easy for anyone with Excel experience to use. They find the formatting capabilities highly effective in managing large amounts of data.
Confusing User Interface: Many users have expressed frustration with the confusing and complicated user interface of Smartsheet, making it difficult for them to navigate and complete tasks efficiently. This issue has been mentioned by multiple reviewers.
Lacking Spreadsheet Functionalities: A number of users have mentioned that some basic spreadsheet functionalities, such as Merge Cells, are missing in Smartsheet. This limitation hampers their ability to manipulate data effectively.
Limited Integration with Excel: Advanced Excel users have voiced their desire for Visual Basic functionality in Smartsheet, which would allow them to automate tasks and customize the software further. Its absence restricts their ability to fully leverage the tool's capabilities.
Users have made several recommendations for Smartsheet based on their experiences. First, users highly recommend considering PPM and PSA needs before implementing Smartsheet, as the platform may be more suitable for certain project and task management requirements. Second, users recommend integrating Smartsheet with a calendar for easy viewing of due dates, emphasizing the benefit of combining Smartsheet's features with a calendar tool to enhance visibility and organization of deadlines. Lastly, users appreciate the real-time management and ability to use Smartsheet among multiple team members, highlighting the platform's capability to facilitate collaboration and streamline workflows within teams.
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Reviews
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February 17, 2016
Smartsheet - They know their sheets.
Smartsheet was used by our project managers to track and collate notes, bugs and comments from our clients. Rather than give them access to our internal issue tracker, we could set up Smartsheet as an outward facing lower-cost solution.
- Smartsheet is a quick way to make simple and effective spreadsheets.
- The templates provided are powerful and useful.
- Role management was a snap.
- Needs more niche templates.
- More Excel type math and automated features.
- Could use a visual design overhaul.
February 16, 2016
Smartsheet gave our staff the info they needed as soon as possible!
The entire staff of Save Our Shores find Smartsheet to be 'just the tool needed' for a variety of project management needs.
We use it to update grant deliverables, grant management, contract invoicing, and keeping staff aware of their particular program budgets.
IF you ever worked with excel docs, you'll have no problem working with Smartsheet. And the added value of Smartsheet is you can decide who can see and edit particular lines of your document, or your particular sheets. That includes staff, Board, or community members.
We use it to update grant deliverables, grant management, contract invoicing, and keeping staff aware of their particular program budgets.
IF you ever worked with excel docs, you'll have no problem working with Smartsheet. And the added value of Smartsheet is you can decide who can see and edit particular lines of your document, or your particular sheets. That includes staff, Board, or community members.
- Smartsheet makes it easy to use the format particular to your project or organization. So you don't have to reinvent a document you created somewhere else. But if you're unsure how to present particular information, they offer great templates that you can reformat easily enough.
- We're still trying to understand how to take particular lines from several different documents and merge them into another document for a particular staff member.
February 16, 2016
Smartsheet is easy smart
Smartsheet is used in our department for project tracking and task management. I use it for my team's project tracking and task assignments. The software helps in collaborative planning and project management. Different teams across our department use Smartsheet to share and collaborate projects and initiatives. As we have integrated the software with our enterprise single sign in solution, it helped us for easier access and sharing.
- Only client software required is a browser
- Access control at user level
- Mobile app for iOS and Android
- Assigning a task to more than one user (not available by default)
- A standard template for meeting notes which can be easily attached to a project
- Integration with other cloud SaaS platform like Salesforce
February 16, 2016
Smartsheet for Productivity
Smartsheet is being used by various programs across the agency. The software is used in diverse ways some use it for: tasks, assigning case loads for environmental health using reminders, to track programmatic processes at both high-level reporting and diving into the details of projects.
- Smartsheet has been excellent for assigning tasks to teams. By entering my team member's contact information and a due date, I can easily set reminders to keep them on track and to notify me if anything is running behind.
- Reports are an excellent way to pull information from multiple sheets. One of our teams uses this for each staff member to track their case load. Team leads are able to easily see the status of each assignment.
- Smartsheet is easy to learn. We have staff ranging widely in age and technology use. The functionality of Smartsheet is like a mix of Excel and Google Docs with the additional perk of alerts and easy collaboration. We have found that anyone who has even basic experience with Excel can easily work in Smartsheet with a little extra guidance.
- Conditional formatting automatically changes as a project is updated by you and/or your team. This makes it easy to identify where the project is on track and where it is falling behind with just a quick glance at your Gantt Chart or spreadsheet.
- We have found that Excel and Google Docs "super users" get frustrated with some of the nuances of Smartsheet compared to their regular programs. Making sure that Smartsheet is not "just another tool" that our staff has to use, discussing the differences between Smartsheet and those programs, and explaining why we chose to use Smartsheet for a particular program, makes a huge difference in staff perception.
- A lot of front end planning and organization is needed for some of the larger projects in Smartsheet. It is best to start small and play in the software so you can learn how everything works, before developing a robust program Gantt and reporting system.
- Our organization has looked at expanding the use of Smartsheet to report consistently across our seven divisions. However, the dashboard functionality is not quite where we need it.
December 23, 2015
Smartsheet a great addition to project teams
Smartsheet is used across our organization and shared with our clients to track projects and communications.
- Smartsheet has great pre-defined templates for a variety of tasks from project management with Gantt charts, team task lists, bug tracking, to financials, etc... All templates are easily customized for your specific needs.
- Smartsheet easily allows for team communication on tasks, attaching external documents and email alerts/updates to the team.
- Easily allows for moving items / tasks around on a sheet (much easier than Excel).
- Includes many Excel type functions/formulas.
- While there are functions/formulas available, they are not always intuitive to create. Would be great if it had a function builder tool similar to Excel to simplify, or allow an excel function to be added. If you need complex formula development, stick with Excel or Google Sheets
Smartsheet has been used by our startup for the purposes of mapping out product development schedules in a Gantt chart.
- It is cloud based so it is always up to date.
- It is browser based so it is the same interface regardless of operating system.
- It is easy to share and collaborate again due to the fact it is on the cloud.
- A way to zoom out the left columns in a Gannt chart not just the calendar on the right.
- More visualization options to convert a Gantt in a simple timeline view, it looks like you are already doing this now.
- In an ideal world this would be a set of power features for Google Spreadsheets.
December 23, 2015
Forget Microsft Excel or Project and Use SmartSheet!
Here at Minnkota Power, we use Smartsheet to manage and track our many construction projects throughout the year. We have essentially replaced Microsoft Project with Smartsheet due to the ease of creating custom GANTT charts and schedules and the ability to share and collaborate on these schedules across our department.
Currently we are only using Smartsheet heavily in the Engineering department, but our Operations department has taken an interest and is ramping up their usage. Occasionally we send out update requests to other departments in the company but I would not consider them to be users of the software. The main problem that Smartsheet addresses is it puts everything in one place. Not only does it eliminate everything being stored in a huge folder hierarchy where no one can ever find anything, but it puts everything online and can be accessed from anywhere! It is also great for reminders and updates on a regular basis.
- Collaboration - The ability to easily share a sheet with another co-worker or multiple people and have everyone making updates all at the same time is really nice.
- Integration - Smartsheet integrates with Outlook very nicely. I can easily send updates, notifications, or any other messages to anyone through email. This eliminates having to open up my email and type up a message about a particular row or item in Smartsheet. Using the send row option it just sends a nice snapshot of the row with a brief message! We also use Microsoft SharePoint here at Minnkota as well and I have found the publishing function of Smartsheet to be very useful! This allows a sheet to be embedded into a webpage or SharePoint site for viewing access to any of our SharePoint users, which is everyone at our company.
- Keeping up with the times - There seems to always be new features or updates coming out for Smartsheet. A lot of other companies do this with their software as well, but usually it just adds a lot of confusion with the product. SmartSheet is all about keeping their product user friendly. Not to much training is really required for Smartsheet. I'd say that most anyone could sign up for the 30 day trial and have a good portion of the product features figured out. However, the best practices take time and a lot of trial and error before you can figure out what works best for your company.
- Support - Smartsheet has a link on their website where you can shoot an email off about anything. They are usually pretty quick to respond and if what you are requesting is not "possible" then they seem to always have a work-around for everything!
- There are minor details dealing with the dependency settings on a sheet. For some reason, if you are trying to utilize cell linking, the parent rows can not be used as a source. This really isn't a huge issue and I have been using a work-around for this but it is one thing that would be nice to just be built in.
- Reporting - Reports are very nice because they can pull information from multiple sheets. However, when information is pulled in, the Parent-Child relationships are not shown. Everything appears to all be on the same hierarchy level. The only work-around I found for this is to apply formatting to the parent rows, basically filling the rows with color or editing the font.
- A new update is coming out that eliminates the ability for users with Admin access to a sheet to be able to edit column properties. This was one of the strengths of SmartSheet that they seem to be taking away for some reason. Now, I just don't really see the benefit of being an Admin of the sheet versus an Editor. Only Admins that are actual Licensed Users can edit column properties. Seems to be a way for SmartSheet to get more money by forcing companies to purchase more licenses.
September 30, 2015
Get smart with Smartsheet!
Currently, I use Smartsheet daily along with a few others within the company. We have been looking for a reliable project management tool for a long time and Smartsheet was a top ranking tool we wanted to try. We have been beta testing Smartsheet amongst the IT group and a select few to help with various projects (ex. project management, tasks list, PTO, tickets, etc.). We also rely on this tool to provide more forms of communication internally and externally.
- Cloud-based Project Management Tool - can be used across all platforms which makes communication and workflow easier.
- Modern and sophisticated tool supports many types of projects. Integration with other tools complements what we already use such as Google Calendar and Docs.
- Uncanny customer support - the Smartsheet team is Awesome! They provide both free/paid workshops, one-on-one sessions, web conferences, lab - with more features in development to help users, and so much more!
- Growing pains. There are some features I still do not know about or do not have the proper training to utilize or understand. Even though paid workshops are available in WA they are outside my area (San Francisco, Bay Area). Furthermore, if I want to be an advocate of this software to hopefully educate my company to use it I would like more available courses (prefer free) in my reach to better push it forward.
- Mixed review, some think it's easy and some find it complicated. Maybe add more integration and features or even templates to help these users.
September 30, 2015
Smartsheet Hits (and Misses) – A Communications Perspective
Our communications department uses Smartsheet to document, organize and plan communication requests we receive from the ministry areas in our church. Currently, it is a tool used only by our communications staff, but we are planning to train our ministry administrative assistants to view and track their requests. Eventually, we would like to make it accessible to our executive staff for a high-level view. Previous to using Smartsheet, we had numerous requests for various communications materials to be created for various timespans. It was inefficient, in consistent, and the "system" was the use of file folders and post-it notes and the ability to retain memory of conversations with the requestors. Now, it is a repository that contains all the emails, files, etc. in one place and something that is easily accessible by our other team members.
- Highly customizable. You can talk about one line/task/row in a project, or an entire sheet/project. You can share with anyone, regardless of permissions.
- Provides an efficient tool for current and previous records by keeping all your files, emails, discussions, etc. in one place.
- Adaptable style for any type of visual person. From background colors to the type of project status symbols, users will feel comfortable in creating a view that's right for them.
- Linking cells to a second spreadsheet is helpful. However, there seems to be some gaps in the designed functionality. When you want to remove something, and unlink the original, the previously linked cells in the second spreadsheet do not delete as well (requiring manual deletion and wasted time). There seems to be some problems with filtering, and then sorting a column (it won't let you). Last, the Reports feature used to show "last update" by the minute which was updated even if just looked at and resaved. A few months ago, the "last update" column would not update even if a change was made. The Smartsheet rep replied by email saying Reports require a change to a column header to make "last update" update. This is not helpful because I update the date query to sort the data I would like to look at each week in the report (and never need to change any columns). For me, this has caused a negative impact in what I thought was an effective work flow.
- Adequate customer service, but not superior. I've had immediate help through email with Smartsheet tech support. However, I would prefer a phone call for two-way interaction. Additionally, I attended a helpful webinar, but submitted a question, and was told all questions would be followed up with individually. I never heard back.
- There have been some problems with connectivity. Maybe 10–20 times in the past year, I have received "Smartsheet is unavailable at this time, check your browser" while other websites are still accessible. I had to wait anywhere from a few minutes to an hour to access our data. A few times it went offline while I was working and I hadn't saved (there is a helpful reminder that pops up every 10 minutes reminding you to save your work though).
August 19, 2015
A cornerstone to our small business success!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Vitatech uses Smartsheet in several ways all of which are extremely important to both our organization and our clients. Our entire organization relies on it for management of project flow and at-a-glance assurance that we are meeting deadlines and goals in a timely manner. Several of our employs travel and spend very little time in the office. Being able to remotely log into our project sheets and exchange files though line items has proven invaluable to our production and success. Not only does Smartsheet bridge the gap between our largely mobile office, but it also allows us to communicate files and deadlines to our clients whereas lengthy emails tend to get lost in translation or convoluted over time.
- Assist in managing deadlines and project flow.
- Allows users to communicate directly through the program to both users within the organization but also outside.
- Extremely user friendly and efficient.
- Real time ability to update both in the office and on the go.
- The system for categorizing sheets is a bit outdated and could use some polishing.
- Could use a nudge a bit further into project conception stage.
- Would like an option to enter client data attached to a sheet without having to columns/fields
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
My company uses Smartsheet in multiple departments - sales, sponsorship fulfillment/tracking, project management, file storage, etc. We started by using it exclusively for sponsorship fulfillment (internal management as well as externally with our clients), but I quickly became an internal proponent of its use and now easily half of our employees use it for one reason or another. It has completely changed the way we do business. It streamlines our processes internally (and helps us keep track of the who-did-what along the way) and is an intuitive tool for the tech-savvy or the tech-averse.
- Collecting data from various sources via Web Forms
- I've had people ask why some of the more basic functions of Excel are not available in Smartsheet, like merging two cells together. My assumption is that this is a sorting issue, but I'm not sure.
- I wish there was a way to sync more than one Google Drive account when uploading documents to rows. One of our clients has multiple Google Drive accounts intentionally, so they often need to attach documents from both. Since Smartsheet only allows one to be synced for uploading/attaching purposes, that does not work for our client. Instead, they hyperlink the Google Documents, but accessing those hyperlinks requires them to log in each time.
- I wish there was a way to set a different level of access per sheet within Workspaces, as needed. We have Workspaces set up where we want every user to have some level of access, but they should be Viewers for some and Editors for others. I believe the current Workspaces require that any user with access to it has just one level of access for all included sheets.
- I don't believe you can change the Primary Column once a sheet has been created, which is been problematic occasionally.
- It would be great to be able to see days/times when users have accessed Smartsheets that have been shared with them. Sometimes we wonder if our clients are even accessing/viewing them once they're set up, so we would love to have the same level of access/transparency that Smartsheet provides within the "Login History" for account admins.
May 26, 2015
The Swiss Army Knife of Task Management
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Smartsheet is a very easy to use tool. Most users are familiar with Excel, so starting with a spreadsheet feel makes it easy to adopt. Summarizing data across all projects into one place with linked cells and reports is extremely valuable. It allows me to quickly dive into the areas that need the most attention. Row level associations for Reminders, Discussions and File Attachments keep the team up to date. Web Forms and Update Requests make life SO much easier. We've reduced email traffic tremendously. Most Smartsheet users use Web Forms for customer feedback. We use them internally to log the activities of large groups and program membership. We're using it for 3rd party agency collaboration on projects. Templates help us communicate licensing and upgrade options with customers. It's been a true game changer and given us a competitive advantage.
- Collapsible Rows - The ability to create a hierarchy and 'nest' rows under one another brings order to chaos. I have a Smartsheet that is over 800 rows. When collapsed, it's only 4 rows and allows you to logically dive into the parts that mean the most to you. Like a Mind Map.
- Ease of Use and Adoption - Smartsheet is seeing viral adoption here at VMware because it looks & feels like a spreadsheet.
- Versatility - It is the Swiss Army Knife of task management. Events, Customer Enablement, Professional Services, Sales Enablement, Sales Reporting, Lead Reporting... It's a game changer...
- Collaboration - Internally everyone can stay updated and on the same page. The ability to share outside the company has mad working with agencies MUCH easier, drastically reducing the time it takes to complete projects.
- Reporting - I have tasks assigned to me on several different project sheets. I have 1 report that lists everything assigned to me across all projects.
- Some basic spreadsheet functionality like Merge Cells have to be worked around.
- I am an advanced Excel user and wish I could have Visual Basic functionality in Smartsheet.
April 08, 2015
More Than Portfolio Management
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Smartsheet is the hub we use to centralize all information: property details, client communication, vendor resources and more. With the information consolidated and easily accessible in Smartsheet, Colliers has won more business, improved communication, and created a culture of transparency.
- Colliers’ property managers use the mobile app to snap photos of their sites for accurate record keeping.
- Alerts and reminders automated in their sheets, property managers never have to worry that they may be dropping the ball or missing a site visit – reminders are scheduled well in advance. Now, site visits run like clockwork.
- When we meet with new clients for the first time, Smartsheet is a selling feature for our services.
- Managers have true visibility into the workload of their staff. We’re able to compare portfolios side-by-side and also run reports across sheets and portfolios.
- The ability for more specific notifications per the individuals would be extremely helpful.
- Summary of data which is automated instead of manual creation
- More formula functions are needed in specific situations.
Smartsheets has helped streamline the task management aspects of a project when coordinating with those on my team as well as with others who may have an ancillary role at any given time. It is similar to Google Sheets, but includes a host of tools similar to what one might find in Microsoft Project. In fact, it is the equivalent cloud version of Microsoft Project.
- Action Items
- Schedule
- Prioritization
- Organization
- Communication
- Advanced formatting options
- Advanced exporting options
March 13, 2015
Smartsheet makes a smart me!
Smartsheet has helped me tremendously over the last two years. It is easy to learn and extremely intuitive. The time that it would take me to build out complex schedules in any other tool would take four times longer than in Smartsheet. I feel that the individuals that built Smartsheet really put themselves in a project manager's shoes and looked at all the benefits and restrictions objectively. I specifically like that the updates and new features integrate with all other parts of the system. A lot of programs I have worked in seem to pile new functionality on top of current without a true integration with one another, and it can be very frustrating.
- I love the feature to store files and set alerts on a line item. This has been a huge help in keeping multiple deliverables organized and in one place.
- The shortcuts are great! I can keep typing and quickly ad rows, nest and un-nest items fluidly.
- It's easy on the eyes, meaning it's familiar (excel) which makes a huge difference when learning a new system.
- I would love if you could drill down deeper so as to schedule by hour and see it in Gantt chart view.
March 10, 2015
Investing in Smartsheet is worthwhile.
Smartsheet is used to collect and organize department information for daily tasks. Multiple members of our department use and collaborate through the system. It enables us to link sheets, share edits and notify each other when changes have been made.
- It's easy to set up spreadsheets for the entire calendar year to map out a particular strategy, like marketing opportunities for our website.
- You can create multiple projects and link them together, which enables you to see the project as a whole instead of a bunch of spreadsheets.
- You can color-code, add dates and times, things you normally can only do on Excel - but it's web based.
- I would like to have a little more flexibility when it comes to adding dates to my spreadsheet. Right now it had a set column.
- As online software systems become more competitive pricing wise, it might be better to bring down the price of the basic package so that more people are interested in upgrading. Or add more features to the basic package, like a limited version of the team package.
- I would prefer if it automatically saved, instead of needing me to physically hit the button.
March 10, 2015
Smartsheet Positives and Negatives
Smartsheet is used for a variety of projects at Gateway Technical College throughout the whole organization. When I began my position, we mainly used it to track purchase orders in the IT department. Once I became familiar with the program, we began implementing Smartsheet in other departments. I've helped set up Smartsheets that are used for facilities project management, lessee and lessor agreements, inventory, workshop registration, and capital requisitions to name a few. Smartsheet definitely helps keep things organized and makes it very easy for many people to have live access to documents.
- The ability to attach documents to a whole sheet or a specific line is very convenient and a time saver!
- The ability to share a document with many people, and the capability to choose whether specific people can "edit" or only "view".
- E-mail notifications for things like due dates, update requests, alerts, etc.
- Conditional formatting that allows documents to look organized and professional.
- The ability to add column headers would be a great feature.
- It would also be helpful if formatting could be done to specific words or lines, versus formatting being applied to an entire cell.
Smartsheet was used for pure project management, to make traditional Project Plans with Gantt charts, dependencies, resources, and attached documents. It was able to replace traditional Microsoft Project needs, in addition to more sophisticated workflow needs like email reminders, document management, and team discussions. As a low-cost, lightweight, portable replacement for Microsoft Project, is it without peer.
- Conditional Formatting is an easy and highly effective way to assist readability, and more importantly, upkeep of a project plan.
- While not obviously a team management tool, don't overlook these functions in Smartsheet, which can obviate the need for other such tools.
- The web interface is slick and modern in all the best ways a modern app should be. It can be customized far beyond just a MPP-alike.
- So many good features are hidden, such as the team management tools. This makes them hard to use.
- The "sheets" quota, and the transmission of sheets between members, and the ability to maintain sheets - the whole system is convoluted. While I understand it after having used it so long, and also understanding the revenue model, it's a shortcoming of "product management."
- It does not save automatically in the same way Google docs does. When people integrate with Google Docs, but the integrated tool doesn't follow one of the key affordances of Google Docs... well, a lot of people lose work, which is esp discouraging in that critical "education" phase.
March 09, 2015
Smartsheet Review
Smartsheet is used to organize our events checklists, budgets, etc. It is an easy tool to use where everyone can have input and have access to the working documents. It makes it easy for us to work together without being right next to each other. This program keeps us organized throughout our department!
- Budgets - easy to create with all of the existing templates.
- Event preparation - plan an event with deadlines, assigned employees, importance level.
- Export! You can easily export your work into an Excel (or other programs) to easily give to someone not working within Smartsheet.
- I'd like to see the assigned employee option more advanced. I'd love to see some type of tool that will show me all of the current projects with their status.
March 07, 2015
Much More Organized
We use it share documents, create schedules for land entitlements, and list documents required for submittals/applications.
- Gantt Chart
- Conditional Formatting
- Sharing
- Fonts, colors, and other formatting.
- Exporting pdfs for printing - formats can be way to small to read.
- Need for a quick how to message for clients.
March 07, 2015
Simple to use, highly effective, and terrific project mgmt resource for a small company
Our teams had been managing detailed projects via Excel, Google Spreadsheets and Powerpoint before I recommended Smartsheet. Smartsheet provided the ability to have shared, detailed views for project managers and consolidated views for executives, which helped everyone easily stay on the same page.
- Stay organized. Smartsheet was like a spreadsheet on steroids with very smart features for keeping everyone on the same page.
- Show what matters. We used the nested rows feature A LOT in order to hide details when not needed, that made project management very efficient with simple clicks to dive deep.
- Stay up-to-date. With the spreadsheets updated in the cloud, anyone from our worldwide team always had easy access to update and view the most current project status.
- The only reason we grew out of Smartsheet is because we were ready to move to more guided workflow, so we upgraded to Atlassian JIRA for that purpose. We used the Structure plug-in to simulate the nested tasks that we loved in Smartsheet, but it was much more cumbersome and we definitely miss that aspect of Smartsheet.
March 06, 2015
Functional. Simple. Good for small business admin
We originally chose Smartsheet to help the administrative department. It was implemented to help people with basic computer skills stay on top of contracts, quotations, and customer responses and later used to help the sales team communicate sales calls to management and coordinate next steps. Smartsheet is a very easy to use and understand tool that is similar to an advanced Excel sheet. It works on the same logic and has a familiar layout, with the design being minimal and clean. I would say this is best suited for very small companies where only basic recording and communication capabilities are used, with the primary usage to be personal organization.
- Minimal, clean design
- Organizing tasks
- Communicating completed and upcoming tasks to sales managers
- It did not work for generating our type of quotations.
- We desired one-way viewing in areas/ documents that were unavailable.
- Tracking location of usage would be a helpful feature with managing traveling sales reps.
March 05, 2015
Great for internal Web Forms
Smartsheets is used as a project managing tool. It has dates set with check boxes we have to click on to mark a task as done. We also use their forms to submit bi-monthly billing time.
- Their customizable forms are easy to fill out and they look clean.
- Marking tasks as complete just requires one click
- The smartsheets are not to visually appealing.
We used Smartsheet to allow our virtual office to share access to a few constantly changing spreadsheets. We are in the motivational speaking business and we used this service before we got serious about a full CRM. What we liked about it was the ability to be almost live with another user and to add attachments to each field. Smartsheet functioned well for us while we gained momentum as a company. We now use Google Apps for business as it does the same thing but allows us to attach on other apps such as our email and calendar.
- Smartsheet allows multiple users to easily access the same information in realtime.
- Smartsheet allows for each field that is customized add attachments
- Smartsheet shows you when others are viewing the document.
- Smartsheet when we were using it did not allow us to use it in connection with our calendar which made it difficult.
- Smartsheet didn't have a lot of add ons to enhance the experience.
- If it was an app that I could attach to my Google Apps or SalesForce it might interest me again.
March 04, 2015
Great project management software
I think SmartSheet is a very good product, and replicates all the desirable portions of conventional project planning software like MS Project. The UI is smoother than Project and it was easier for me to correlate the data in the grid to the charts on the right. I like that the data can be exported and shared, and that makes this a very collaborative software.
One limitation that I continue to find jarring is the lack of an out-of-the-box tie into JIRA and other tools where the atomic aspects of the project live. It would be neat if dates that shift in JIRA, for example, also led to adjustments in the project schedule. That would save me time and enable tracking all the same.
One limitation that I continue to find jarring is the lack of an out-of-the-box tie into JIRA and other tools where the atomic aspects of the project live. It would be neat if dates that shift in JIRA, for example, also led to adjustments in the project schedule. That would save me time and enable tracking all the same.
- The UI is smooth and easy to use.
- The tool is intuitive in that it works just the way I'd want a tool like this to operate.
- The charts are easy to follow and correlate well with the dates on the left.
- The tool can be a bit slow sometimes given the graphics that it requires.
- The lack of direct tie-in to tools like JIRA diminishes what would otherwise be a complete tool.