Smartsheet Room for Improvement

MD
Business Analyst

An area for improvement in Smartsheet is that if you're in the government or you're a regulated customer, you're not allowed to use APIs due to internal restrictions, so there are specific things that you cannot connect to it.

Another area for improvement in the solution is that because there's a capacity of how many records you can have, and there's a capacity of how many functions you can apply, Smartsheet has set up their system where they can force people into purchasing a $20,000 additional module that is called Control Center, that will create documents for them on the fly, so they don't use so many functions and automation.

Smartsheet also needs to improve on training, because the training that is out there is very little. The solution requires a steeper learning curve. You have to do your own training and you have to work on your own solution. I created about a hundred training videos for Verizon, particularly on how to use Smartsheet, and I was told that Verizon's still using the videos and that Verizon still loves them.

Smartsheet also puts a lot of updates out quite often, so there was a time when I had a form that was capturing ten to fifteen entries every hour, and one of the things is that new addition or an enhancement was put into the form, and it skewed the form. In this case, Smartsheet doing a lot of implementations and enhancements quickly became a con.

What also needs to be improved in Smartsheet is allowing columns to be changed, not to have to roll over, and one thing about it is row-level. There's a reason for that: it's how you can send out secure update requests. I have to pull in data from another sheet, which includes all of the data from the columns, and used a formula that was such an advanced formula, which I had to check using Smartsheet's restrictions: at thirty characters, a space, and a colon, and add all that to a column onto the other sheet, then pull that data in using a function. Smartsheet should have a functionality that would automatically pull in all the data for you and update your dropdown menu via a summary sheet, so that was what my team couldn't do without using the Control Center, and in the end, I was able to do without using the Control Center. I don't think the Smartsheet team even knew that the solution had that ability.

You should not have to pull in columns that you don't need if you need to move data, because you may not want somebody seeing the baseline column, you may just want the person to be able to look at specific columns and it brings the whole row in, so it can become really slow if you're hiding columns. You'd like to avoid that at all costs.

Another thing I would change in Smartsheet is its backup ability: it's terrible. I've heard other people lose data, and that some formulas don't work as they were supposed to, particularly some Excel-type formulas, though I never really had any struggle with that because I always found some workaround.

In the next release of Smartsheet, I'd also like the forms to be improved. If you wanted to ask a person a question, you had to create a field. Smartsheet created an environment where you can ask a question, but you can't add any conditions to it. There are conditional rules, for example, you don't want to show somebody a form that has a hundred questions if you don't need to ask them a hundred questions, but you would need to create a hundred fields to ask those questions if you wanted them to conditionally show up or not, so I'd like that changed and have Smartsheet create a better environment for asking questions via the forms.

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Ian Herzing - PeerSpot reviewer
Resource Manager at a non-tech company with 11-50 employees

I would like if Smartsheet allowed more formulas in its sheets. I don't think working with formulas is as intuitive as it is in Excel. I use Vlookups and index matches in some of my sheets, and I had to find an outside consultant to help me build out those formulas. 

I'm a pretty smart guy, but I could not figure out how to get the formulas to work in tandem across a couple of different sheets so I could pull in the necessary information. They could make the formulas more intuitive or provide more training. That's probably my biggest complaint.

I also don't like having to save when I update a sheet or a report. Autosave is standard in most solutions these days. They have autosave, but it's not as quick as I'd like it to be. When I update a sheet, I want it to save instantly, so I can go to the next one. If you make a quick update and want to move on, you have to hit Ctrl-S and remember to save. It'll give you a pop-up window that reminds you to save. Most competitors, like Asana, have a quick autosave feature. 

In the next release, I'd like to see improvements to the dashboards. The dashboards are a critical feature, and I love building them for our executives here. They look fine, but they're simple lines of text and blocks. I think they could look a bit prettier.

Smartsheet has invested time into thinking about how they display information on the dashboards, but they could do better. While I don't think there's anything wrong with their current dashboard visualizations, I would love to see a more modern look. Right now, the interface looks a bit dated.

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Asma Ali - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees

At one point we were trying to use it to organize a curriculum for students to just have the weekly stuff. We kind of ran into trouble doing this. It's not really designed for that. What we were trying to do is give them a real-time syllabus with pre-readings and activities and stuff embedded. It ended up getting really complicated.

They also had access, and while there’s probably a way to not give them access, I didn’t know how to set that. I just wanted to let them download. It got complex. It wasn’t just people updating what they were working on. It was something else and it didn’t work.

If there was some way to store more complex files in the system, or if there was a back-end structure where you could store files, that would be ideal. We use Box to store recordings, for example, of sessions and stuff. We’d like to store it in this solution. We already integrate Smartsheet into Teams for updates and stuff. That works well.

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James John Wilson - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Development Manager at Freelancer

The main challenge with Smartsheet is that when you start putting components on the Smartsheet dashboard, they don't know about each other. So, if I filter something in one widget, or if I click on a region or a project ID, the other widget or component and the visualization that's on that dashboard don't change. It doesn't know about the other component.

It probably also doesn’t allow you to level resources in a project plan. So, if I assign five tasks to you and they all occur on the same day, in Microsoft Project, I can level them. Because you can only do one thing in a day, it would spread those out over five days, instead of all piled up on a single day, but I don't think Smartsheet had that.

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Natalija Prodanovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Global IT PMO at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Smartsheet could be improved with an integration with Outlook and Notion. I would also like to see other general integrations. I would most like to see an integration with my Outlook calendar so I can see the tasks that I have and action workflows from my inbox and those notification emails I get.

I think it is all going to be about APIs in the future and I don't think Smartsheet is doing a lot in that regard. They have some integrations with Jira, but you have to pay for them. 

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Ciprian Porutiu - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President, Operations & Delivery | Change Management | Digital Transformation at Marsh Limited

I'm working around project management. Anything that they can emulate from the more specialized solutions, in terms of Microsoft Project or anything else that could bring the project plans to a closer alignment with Microsoft Project, that'd be great in terms of task dependency and automatic adjustments. 

Maybe the solution could be a little bit more flexible. It's a very nice and optimal solution, however, it's not 100% in all directions. Some of the more advanced features of Excel could be there. 

You have certain fields that you conditionally format. On certain occasions, you are not able to override those. You have to go by the formula or eliminate the formula, the conditional formatting thing. That is sometimes in project management - you have to go by the rules, then you have to overrule certain times. It's a little annoying sometimes that you have to remove the conditional formatting in order to impose, for example, the red status, red, amber, or green, according to what you know, not what was calculated. 

Overall, it's something that we use and then we adapt our ways of working around the tools that we have. Altogether, it's a positive experience.

I'm not a heavy user. Once I set up the template, it's just like using it there, however, I would be interested in maybe being connected to the labs, their labs in which they've got beta or gamma versions of proposed features being tested, and I would be willing to test them out. 

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Blake Clifford - PeerSpot reviewer
Adjunct Professor & Project Manager at USCCG

Smartsheet should continue to expand the spreadsheet-type functionality because it's limited currently. Most business users are familiar with Excel and Office, so Smartsheet should adopt a similar way of navigating the program. 

When you're moving through cells or fields, you can't move with your arrows flipping back between things. If you hit enter, it doesn't do the same thing it does in Excel.

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JS
National Sales Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Areas for improvement in Smartsheet include better integration capabilities with other technologies through APIs and addressing limitations in reporting functionalities. Specifically, the ability to automate and customize reports more efficiently, as well as ensuring that exported reports display properly, especially when printing to PDF, would enhance user experience.

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TA
IT Project Management Lead at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

There are some pain points for me. Other people use it a little differently, but I would like to be able to do a little more with it. I would like database functionality with it wherein if I bring in several Excel spreadsheets of data and load them into Smartsheets, I should be able to make a correlation between an index field and run a report against those two. I can do it, but it's a little clunky. So, I need a little more experience to feel comfortable doing that.

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Donee Damore - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Director Of Project Management at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

I don't believe you could add another sheet to it, which is something you can do in an Excel spreadsheet. Such as another tab, you would have to start from scratch.

You were forced to create a new tab rather than add another sheet.

In the next release, I would like to see the ability to create additional sheet tabs and keep everything in one place. What you could do, with the way it's set up, which is also nice, is to do one project plan on top and then create another one with different dates and put the predecessor in, and it's all on one sheet. However, you'd have to delete that instead of just deleting the sheet once it's finished.

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JG
Associate General Research at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees

I'd like to see them add more features to their automation. Right now, automation is very limited. There needs to be more capabilities and more formulations in general. 

We'd like it if it was easier to reference items with other sheet information. 

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JC
Contract Programme Manager at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

I do not like the solution. From a project management and planning point of view, it's awful. The product must adopt some of the functionalities that are already in Microsoft Project. They must adopt functionalities like auto-scheduling, linking tasks together automatically, and scheduling based on the dependencies.

We have to manually put in every dependency in Smartsheet. It is incredibly annoying. In Microsoft Project, we just highlight the two that we want to link and click the link option, and it makes them dependent.

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Gaithre-Muren - PeerSpot reviewer
Corporate Paralegal at a tech consulting company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I think that the mobile interface needs to be improved. If you cannot access it through your laptop, I'd prefer to have that option on the mobile, but I don't think that it's user-friendly and easy to navigate.

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YvesDene - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Consultant CSV at QbD

The system can become more challenging to use in more complex scenarios, requiring additional add-ons that can be quite costly. 

However, since we don't use those add-ons, this is not an issue for us.

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SP
Associate Director at a pharma/biotech company with 11-50 employees

The long-term timelines could be improved, especially the visuals on the projection Gantt chart. When you have to take the sheet and project it, there's no way to easily convert it into a PowerPoint. You have to use Tableau or something else. If there was a way to quickly capture the long-term timelines from Smartsheet into a visualization software, that would be really useful for board meetings or the more strategic meetings.

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TamerNasr - PeerSpot reviewer
Executive at Nazeq

A room for improvement I found in Smartsheet is the view, as it's currently row-wise. I should have the opportunity to view a full scale, top down list instead of just a column driven list. I shouldn't have to go just left or right. I should be able to view it top down.

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SandeepKumar15 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Developer at ZNet Technologies Private Limited

Smartsheet could improve the UI and integrations. Some of Smartsheet's competitors have more than 2,000 integrations while Smartsheet only has approximately 40 integration applications.

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Siba Shankar  Reddy - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Information Technology Analyst at Applied Materials

They should improve the solution's integration with API. It has certain limitations. The solution would work best integrated with multiple tools.

Also, they should add free templates compatible with multiple domains. It will be convenient for us to pick up the templates without worrying about the back-end process.

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Mario Vismara - PeerSpot reviewer
GPO - PMO - Global Manager at Wolters Kluwer

Smartsheet's export and print functions could be more seamless. Once I create the plan in Smartsheet, I need to import it into my corporate web presentations. This isn't always smooth. I have to save it in PDF format, then cut an image from the PDF version.

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Ron Drake - PeerSpot reviewer
PM/CM Practice Leader at COWI A/S

One of the improvements I'd like to see would be the ability to have attachments that could be edited within Smartsheet. Currently, attachments need to be removed, edited and then returned which is what SharePoint does. 

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Kwaku Anyemedu - PeerSpot reviewer
Accountant at Center source for family support

It would be beneficial to enhance user-friendliness and make it less complex while maintaining its overall excellence as a product. Another area that could benefit from enhancements, is scalability features, particularly in managing the growing complexity that comes with more users.

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NH
Report Analyst at GigaNET

The product must include more modules for project management. It should also include more graphics for dashboard creation.

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SergioRamirez - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales Director at Esource Capital

Smartsheet needs to improve the user interface. 

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Tinoop KR - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Sales Compensation Analyst at Rubrik

With a large quantity of data, the solution lags a bit.

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RS
Service Deliery Manager at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees

Smartsheet could be improved to be a ticketing system. It would be nice to have a system to do everything.

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ARAVIND KUMAR VISWANATHAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Specialist at Cytiva

Smartsheet could improve by having seamless integration with Azure Board.

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Buyer's Guide
Smartsheet
February 2024
Learn what your peers think about Smartsheet. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2024.
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.