In a Nutshell

Smartsheet is an “enterprise-ready” project management platform built for scalability. According to Smartsheet, its platform is used by more than 80% of Fortune 500 companies as well as 3 million regular businesses and individuals. Smartsheet’s tools include capabilities for project management, collaboration, automation, content management, and real-time visibility through dashboards and reports.

Smartsheet at a Glance

Top Features

Smartsheet’s solution centers around WorkApps, a “dynamic work platform” that adapts to the needs of your organization and individual teams. Each project or process begins with an app you create from pre-built templates or on your own. External content from software programs like Tableau or Google Docs can be integrated into the app without a single line of code. User permissions determine who gets access to what information.

WorkApps are backed by powerful capabilities such as:

Automated workflows.Automate repetitive processes by sending alerts, requesting approvals and updates, and locking rows based on sheet changes and pre-set times. Building an automated workflow is similar to building a flowchart and revolves around a set of triggers, conditions, and actions.

Content collaboration.Plan, manage, and review content production through collaboration with internal and external players. Users with approval to edit the document may provide feedback via pinned annotations, conversations, and individual approvals. Vendors and clients can be given permission to edit or just review content.

Dashboards.Dashboards communicate the overall health of a project or process. They are easy to customize with widgets. Multiple dashboards can be brought together to provide a broader picture of your organization’s activities and projects.

Control Center.Built for enterprises, this allows the creation of dashboards, reports, and sheets (collectively referred to as “blueprints”) that capture, manage, automate, and report on unstructured work. Each blueprint provides a consolidated view of the projects contained within, with information about status, budget, at-risk work items and more. The Control Center’s purpose is to enable visible processes at scale and to automate the creation of new projects modelled on best practices contained in the blueprints.

Visualization

Smartsheet offers four visualization options, all accessible with just a click. Each user decides for themselves how they want to view their data.

The options are:

• Grid. Displays data in a spreadsheet format
• Gantt. Displays data in a spreadsheet on the left and a Gantt chart on the right
• Card. Displays data in cards organized in lanes (i.e. columns)
• Calendar. Displays tasks as events in a calendar (week view or month view)

Integrations

Smartsheet offers 71 integrations/connectors that integrate seamlessly into your work apps. It automatically synchronizes data across critical business platforms, including Salesforce, Jira, ServiceNow, and Microsoft Dynamics 365. Furthermore, Smartsheet Data Uploader allows you to merge or replace data from CSV files, Excel spreadsheets, and Google Sheets into Smartsheet.

Plans & Pricing

Smartsheet offers three plans: Individual, for one user, Business, for businesses of all sizes, and Enterprise, for larger organizations. The prices are a little on the expensive side, with the premise being that you get an all-in-one solution comprising all the capabilities Smartsheet has to offer.

Individual gives you access to sheets, dashboards, reports, and automated workflows, and access to most integrations.

Businessadds in a few additional functions such as the ability to proof each other’s work and to track and review how team members are allocated across projects. It also has stronger admin capabilities, including being able to brand your Smartsheet account with custom colors and logos or create groups of multiple users for collaborating on sheets.

Enterprise is the ultimate solution and is best used by larger organizations that want full control and customization of their Smartsheet account. If you want enterprise-standard security and access controls, including single sign on and advanced user permissions, or if you want to be able to synchronize your existing enterprise directory services with Smartsheet, then you will need to subscribe to Enterprise. The Enterprise plan also offers access to the handful of integrations barred to other users, including DocuSign.

Ease of Use

As a powerful project management solution aimed at larger businesses, Smartsheet does have a steeper learning curve than smaller solutions. On-demand training is included with the Enterprise solution but comes at additional cost to other users. Instructor-led training is also offered at additional cost to users of all plans.

In terms of user permissions, Smartsheet is as sophisticated as it gets. At a corporate level, Systems Admins manage users and adjust settings for everyone in the account. Group Admins can create and manage groups based on contacts in their Smartsheet contact list. Sharing permission levels (Viewer, Editor, or Admin) may vary from sheet to sheet so that a user is given access to one sheet but not to another.

Smartsheet can be accessed from any browser or from a mobile app (iOS, Android). There are many similarities between the mobile and desktop versions, although the mobile apps have these additional capabilities:

• Using your GPS to enter your location into a sheet or form field
• Taking a photo with your device, editing it, and uploading it directly to a sheet or form submission
• Scanning a barcode or QR code to update or search for sheet data
• Accessing your forms quickly from the Home or Recents screen

Privacy & Security

As mentioned, Smartsheet offers enterprise-grade security features. All data is stored with NIST approved ciphers, proven transport layer security (TLS) technology from the most trusted providers, AES 256 at-rest encryption, Amazon’s S3 service to store and serve uploaded files.

Enterprise subscribers get access to additional layers of security, including Single Sign-On (SSO), a convenient setting that allows employees to securely sign into Smartsheet with their corporate login credentials.

Customer support

The level of support is determined by the subscription level. All users can request support by email or search for answers through the Help and Learning Center or Smartsheet Community. Phone support is offered free of charge with Enterprise plans, at extra cost to Business subscribers, and is not offered to Individual subscribers. Professional support is offered at extra charge to Enterprise and Business subscribers.

User Testimonials

“We’re actually managing 30% more projects with the same number of project managers as we were before we implemented Smartsheet.”

-Michael Ghrist, IT Account Manager for Commercial Operations, Roche

“What I love about Smartsheet is, I can open the app and search the name, and no matter how many sheets I have — even if I have a hundred sheets for a hundred different events, I can find it. It’s super easy and quick.”

-Megan Gates, event management consultant, McGraw Hill

“There is a transparency that we’ve never seen before. People are able to share and see information in ways they never envisioned or imagined they could before. People are working in real time on three continents; they could never have done that before.”

-Chuck Mihaliak, IT Portfolio Manager, Syngenta North America

Bottom Line

When it comes to a project management solution for enterprises, large businesses, or even rapidly growing medium-sized businesses, Smartsheet should be near the top of everyone’s list. With its dynamic and customizable WorkApps, Smartsheet is capable of easily scaling to meet the evolving needs of your business.