Smartsheet

My company was already using Smartsheet for basic task tracking when I started. Upon discovering how we could use dashboards, our utilization took off! We have now designed solutions for departments company-wide, improving management's visibility to workloads and processes. It's impressive how many problems Smartsheet has been able to solve.

Vorteile

- Ease of Use - No need to involve programmers to create custom solutions
- Versatility - customizable sheets and dashboards for different departments and needs
- Support - AMAZING user forum, help pages, support department

Nachteile

Row and cell link limitations - I bump up against the cell link limitations often, although I can work around them by saving my metrics into multiple sheets.

Satisfied. I manage >25 projects that vary in size and detail. I would not rely on any other project management program that I have used in the past.

Vorteile

Easy to get in, set up, and maintain small-medium size projects. Quick to learn, easy to use.

Nachteile

I would like more intelligence around the columns: 1) more specific formatting choices, like setting the duration to hours, separating effort and duration; 2) Predecessor columns that intelligently follow the task, not only the row number.

One of my team members was able to create a content calendar for a broad editorial group within the platform and it worked great and had excellent adoption from a cross-functional team. Vet it carefully for your particular needs before making an investment -- SS has a lot to offer for the right projects.

Vorteile

SmartSheet provides a lot of great features: easy-to-use "card view", quick Gantt charts and easy entry of tasks. I really like the simplicity of the tool as it feels very much like Excel at first blush. The two levels of access -- one for power users and one for light editors -- helps keep the tool in a very affordable price range. I absolutely love the ability to create a web intake form within minutes that can be published live for use without a login to the system. The form is highly configurable and is a great way to grab structured feedback or details from individuals.

Nachteile

SmartSheet is not a fantastic project management tool for software development. While the web-based intake form is decent for reporting bugs and it is a relatively simplistic tool, tracking items from beginning to end and creating validation loops should be easy but is not. Granted, we were using the tool for something it wasn't technically designed for, but much of the functionality is available within the platform for "light" development teams. Unfortunately, the implementation of specific task-driven items simply wasn't where it needed to be.

I am a devoted Excel fan, and the first time I used Smartsheet, I hated. I thought it was a dumb version of Excel. But gradually others in the organization did more and more with it and I continued to have issues with Shared Workbooks in Excel, I finally decided to give it another shot, and this time I would really look at it. I then realized it had the power of Excel and SharePoint and Nintex Forms, all in one program that was way easier to use than most of the others. I went from hating Smartsheet as my PMO was dragging it into my department, to owning 117 sheets, countless automations and data mesh configurations and data uploader configurations in less than a year. I completely rely on Smartsheet to get my daily work done now and I have lost 2 FTE without feeling any real pressure to replace them. Smartsheet has helped my team that much. I have become a complete Smartsheet nerd.

Vorteile

My favorite thing about this software is the simplicity of creating a very complex set of sheets, automation and forms. I work as a business person within the IT department and it is a tough limbo to exist in. You aren't really IT's customer, but you are not as skilled as an IT professional. I am often left to my own devices and de-prioritized so they can concentrate on our true customers. Smartsheet provided me a system that I did not need my IT department help. I was able to create a set of products (on a very base level, my own small Enterprise Resource Program) entirely alone that has improved my efficiency, quality of work and accuracy! I needed nothing more than my own skills and occasionally Smartsheet's Solution Center.

Nachteile

I am unfond of a few of the tiny limitations. I wish that reports weren't limited to 500 rows per page, and if that limit must exist, I wish there was a function to skip to a specific page. I reference a report that has 400+ lines of data multiple times throughout the day and it's mildly annoying to have to skip through 9 pages on the report to get to what I'm looking for.

I have also had very lukewarm success with Data Uploader. It does not work as expected about 50% of the time. I would honestly give up on it entirely if it wasn't SO useful the other 50% of the time. I waste a lot of time saving and resaving documents and deleting and recreating configurations just to get data to upload.

This software makes everything we do so streamlined and easy. We literally load all of our projects into smartsheet so that we can all manage them. I don't think that I could do my job as efficiently without it. There is s certain project we do once a year where we update pricing on all website items with all of our suppliers. Being able to keep this data in SS, then send our suppliers update requests to load in the data has been a life saver! Keeping track of work along with managing the project has become a breeze.

Vorteile

The thing I like the most is the transparency or the collaboration. To be able to easily see what others are doing and manage them together, set reminders and send update requests is what makes our company run well.

Nachteile

I think there have been a few times that we have maxed out on number of lines. I don't know why that there is a throttle there, but that's probably my only complaint is that some of our sheets get large and max out!