Smartsheet Reviews

- 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

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.

It is mainly used for the management of projects that occur frequently in the company. The main tasks of each project and the secondary tasks linked to them can be managed in detail and in a visual and easy-to-understand way, which is useful to understand the progress and bottlenecks of the project. It is nice to see alerts for overdue tasks.Additionally, a lot of templates are available that can be used for any project, which is very helpful.

The templates are perfect, but there were many times when I hesitated because I often wondered which template to use in the first place. I thought it would be nice to have a feature that would recommend this template for such a project.

For over a decade, Smartsheet has been an invaluable tool for our company. We rely on it heavily to maintain tabs on ad sales, and its ability to host multiple projects at once while remaining accessible to various users at once is its greatest strength.

There is room for development in Smartsheet's learning curve for more sophisticated features. While the fundamentals are easy to pick up, more complicated features like formula creation and workflow automation may take some time to get the hang of.

It is one location where my crew can go to stay on the lookout. Forms and dashboards are quite powerful. With dashboards, you may configure them so that users only load forms. As a result, they will be able to submit the necessary numbers for their jobs more quickly. Forms are improving quickly compared to when they first started.

Currently, the inability to search all of the forms is my least favorite feature. Over 300 forms have been created on a few of my sheets. A form must be submitted when the trainings have been completed via the employee record site I built for this purpose. When there is a change or an error is discovered, I have to sit down and go through it again row by row for the one I want to update.

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.

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.

The overall user experience is very simple yet covers all the project management aspects along with adaptive to fit the very specific requirements of different tasks and teams. Highly customizable and powerful tool to improve efficiency and simplifies the project work flow. Workflow Automation is time saving which is the most required in my daily work routine allows me to focus more on other things and I can rely on the tool.

I would not list any cons. Its just there are still some features which needs to be improved more to make it a complete package such as text formatting and the real time update feature can also be improved/tweaked to make sure the other users/team gets up to date information. There were some projects where sheets size limits was an issue but that could be managed

Very easy to learn and get users onboard quickly. Works much like Excel yet with much more document sharing functionality and the notifications service is most beneficial to us. Very cost efficient in that our clients don't need to purchase a license so we use this to collaborate with them for our project work.

Very little not to like. Advanced functionality we need to not alwasys there, however, Smartsheet comes out with new features a few times a year and they always very helpful. Biggest complaint is that we have not yet figured out how to provide users edit access to a group and yet limit certain sheets within that group to viewer only. Would also like to see more options for backups and restores.

This is the tool we use every day, every hour, to track all of our enrollments and clients. Our team monitors enrollments and other CRM tools don't give us the flexibility to track multiple events and data points. It's Excel but on steroids with multiple functions and features. We're using it more and more every day for reporting up to our management team on progress for our client events.

I'm not so good at the formulaic side of things and making sheets talk to each other, or building a dashboard, is not an intuitive process. There are not step by step instructions or visuals which is something I need personally. It's a lot of trial and error in getting things set up. When I first started, it was very expensive to work with someone who helped build the infrastructure base and looking back there are many things I'd have done differently if I'd understood it a little better. A lot of the consultation time was wasted in trying to get the person to understand what we were trying to achieve.

My company uses Smartsheet to manage projects. We are a software implementation consulting service working with clients (remotely) and collaboration and instant updates to shared project plans, action items lists and contact information is important to ensure the successful management and completion of a project. The reports and widget functions make dashboard reporting easier and more efficient. The ability to export to Excel or Microsoft Projects means that we can collaborate easily with clients who use other tools within their organisation.

The notification functionality is great as well, whether it's getting notified of a change on a sheet, or notified that something has been assigned to you.

I would like to be able to copy directly from Smartsheet into Word, PowerPoint or Outlook (in table format) rather than having to copy into Excel, then copying from Excel to another program to get a table. It's a small thing, but frustrating when all you want to do is copy a portion of a project plan or action list into an email and it comes out as text instead of formatted as a table. :-(

I would also like to be able to display the Gantt chart in different formats for use in presentations and documentation. The standard Gantt chart view is fine, but it would be nice to be able to change colours, font or even the width of the bars to make it more appealing in presentations.

Smartsheet provides a very robust collaboration tool among teams and teams from other companies. The ability to show timelines, comments, attachments, and dates - all in one place - make it very easy to stay on track with projects. This tool also provides a very nice mobile and app platform to work off of while out on the go. We utilize the professional (paid) version to encompass all of the features that we need and are no longer offered in the free version, such as the ability to email directly from the sheet, send for updates, and utilize the reminder functions. Emailing directly from the sheet is a great feature since it allows you to send the comments, attachments, and info from the line all in one easy-to-read email. You can also cc yourself on the email so that you know that it was sent.

One of the things about Smartsheet that could be updated is the ability to copy info from one sheet and create a new sheet. For example, my team utilizes this tool for registration for certain programs at our university. The ability to copy the entire sheet (with all of the info and attachments) onto a new sheet and update the dates, or minimal information, would be a great function to have. The other option would be to allow more functionality in the free version (which was previously there). The update to only allowing email sends from a single line in the professional (paid) version now is a bit challenging when we only budgeted for a certain amount of licenses for the academic year (and we all know how stingy higher ed budgets are right now)

It is wonderful that with Smartsheet, the interface can be easily customized, which helps us prepare it in a way that suits the nature of the tasks we follow. I love the fact that automation simplifies all administrative procedures and allows the management of the workflow, linking the tasks collected from team members with logical relationships. It is also great that there are many ways to display task schedules, which facilitates the follow-up dates and determining outstanding activities. I also appreciate how Smartsheet deals with project data, as it enables us to withdraw data from multiple sources and provides a strict permissible system that helps us maintain the privacy of data and identify people who are allowed to make adjustments to them. I also love how Smartsheet can link the workflow with emails and the ability to add documents and comments, which greatly helps in organizing the team's efforts. dashboards are also distinctive, as they are easy to customize to include information, graphic fees, and tables that we want to highlight.

While there are some imperfections with Smartsheet, the constant upgrades and addition of new features help to mitigate these issues. Although the learning curve may be challenging for some users initially, with continuous practice and guidance, the procedures become easier

Cloud based - available everywhere to everyone
Flexibility - it's not only a project management tool, it can do most things that Excel can do, but often better. Specifically column formulae are a fantastic recent addition that enables sheets to become almost unbreakable

Nothing major. There are some minor gripes:
- Slack integration doesn't allow tagging of individuals, and cannot allow a variable to determine which channel to send the message to
- Cannot yet control heirarchy with formulae, I hope this function will come eventually

SmartSheet is a cloud-based tool that helps Project Managers better align their resources, cost and time. Being a part of a virtual team responsible for collaborating whilst managing critical projects, Smartsheet has been indispensable in helping us track project timeline through interactive Gantt charts, establish critical paths, manage team resources, analyze budget and costs, in addition, to document sharing through OneDrive, Skype and even the app.
It is definitely reliable, has a simple user interface, flexibility in function, offers real-time data tracking through dashboards and training additional collaborators is uncomplicated. I love how SmartSheet offers a powerful conditional formatting feature, visualization of data that is editable and printable for presentations and has a spreadsheet-like interface (like Excel) yet is straightforward, unlike its counterparts.
Another thumbs up feature is that SmartSheet offers a 30-day trial wherein full functionality can be tested and project plans produced before actually investing in the software!

Our firm works from Sunday to Thursday (unlike the USA) and though they are advised well ahead, maintenance windows don't always align with our schedule, and we have to work around that. One attribute that can definitely be improved is the option of turning on auto-save, instead of manually saving the document. Often the development of a comprehensive project plan across several collaborators is quite intense and even if one of them fails to manually save the document, it is quite a hassle.

Smartsheet is an amazing product and helps keep our whole company on schedule and collaborating in real time. It is really flexible and easy to start using.

Once you have used it for a while, you will want to do more and more with it, and there never seems to be a limit to what you can do. They are also constantly adding new helpful features. One that was really useful to me was a kanban view called cardview. But there is also classic spreadsheet view, gannt view, and calendar view.

In addition to sheets, you can also run reports off the sheets which filter the data down for particular users or departments. These reports can be editable or read-only. You can also look at your data in real time using dashboards.

We have been using Smartsheet for several years now, and we still feel like we are only scratching the surface of its capabilities.

Another great feature is that you can have unlimited free collaborators. These people can use the sheets/reports/dashboard and enter data. However, it is only the paid users who can create and maintain the sheets. Over time, you may find more people in your organisation want to be creators, and it is easy to add licenses as needed.

There's not much I can say negative about this software. On rare occasions there can be unexpected outages or loss of functionality, but that is very rare indeed. There are sometimes maintenance windows on the weekend which can last up to 4 hours at a time, but these are advised well ahead of time. I think the only business that wouldn't want to use smartsheet is one that operates 24/7. If you are a normal Monday to Friday business, smartsheet will be fine for you.

easy to set-up processes, ongoing product improvements and additions, great team capabilities, quick and easy adoption due to familiarity of tool to MS Project/Excel style, many different uses outside of projects timelines, very cost effective

interface feels dated (although they're continuously working on this) and not created for non-project team members, dashboard tool and capabilities could use some improvements, sometimes creating cross-functional sheets can be clunky and unnecessarily complex.

Projects are easy to set up with the built in functionality. There are lots of built in templates that you can use. But we have found it most helpful to build our own templates. We really appreciate being able to add dependencies, working and non working days, and duration. Then the start and end dates fill in automatically. We have found that the learning curve is not nearly as steep for Smartsheet as it was for Microsoft Project.

Another really helpful feature is being able to use formulas in the Project Plan. Our team schedules our work using a points system. I was able to create formulas that take the number of points for that task and who is assigned to that task to create a point breakdown for each person or team assigned. We then use the linking feature to link the total points for the project, the points accomplished, and the status of the project to a master "Queue" sheet.

Smartsheet has special formula values available for children and ancestors of a task. So, we use a simple =Sum(Children()) formula to add up the points. Actually, the formulas end up being more complicated because we can test whether the row has children or not and do different things depending on the test. For instance, when summing the work completed if the task has no children, then the product of the percent complete and points gives us the number of points completed. If the row is a parent, then the formula sums the children.

For project planning the resources feature is not as helpful as it could be. The main reason is that if a staff is assigned to a row during a particular time, the resource function assumes that they are 100% allocated for that time. So, if you have three tasks that overlap, the resource allocations shows 300%. We have mitigated that by routinely filling in 30% allocation for each resource. This helps to take into account the fact that a task although it lasts a full week won't take up all the staff's time. One idea I have had recently--but haven't tried yet--is to make a formula that takes the number of points for the task and assigns an appropriate allocation number based on points per week.

The other feature that we haven't found useful is the "Critical Path." How the software determines what is on the critical path is a mystery. I'm not sure why it chooses some tasks that have dependencies filled in, but not others that seem to be just as important.

There's a lot to like about Smartsheet. You can get simple business processes converted quickly. The automation 'designer' is so easy to use and it's quite intuitive. Permissions are easy to manage without feeling overwhelming. Their training center is one of the best I've seen. Our Account Team is also phenomenal. I can't say enough about them. They never make me feel like they don't have time to talk use cases, strategies, or even one off questions. They roll out new functionality often enough to add value but not so often that you can't keep up. Smartsheet also really values their customer's feedback - highly recommend their EAP.

Smartsheet is great in so many ways but there are some functionality missing that would make a massive difference in the amount of processes I could move to Smartsheet - cascading dropdowns, setting a field's value with automation, setting a form field's value based on another field or formula, editing an existing item via a form (not an update request), extract time stamping from cell history to be able to report on it. I would also like to see more consistency in the functionality across different apps within the platform. Overall, I'm able to find workarounds to most of the functionality wish list and with their ability to turn out new features often throughout the year, I don't consider these as deal breakers.

My other pain point (though it's also helpful in some ways, especially for small businesses) is how tiered the features are - meaning that you do have to purchase premium apps/add ons to leverage the full power of Smartsheet. That gives a lot of flexibility in how you want to scale but is also a bit of a pain as an end user, making the case for purchasing the add ons that will help my processes even more.