Smartsheet Review

Elena Humeniuk

PPM Consultant

What is Smartsheet?

Smartsheet is a spreadsheet-based work management solution organizations use to track and manage complex team tasks and projects. It assists businesses of all sizes in improving workflow management and collaboration and is especially helpful for those who favor working together on a spreadsheet. This Smartsheet review will discuss the platform in detail and shed light on its pros and cons.

How to use Smartsheet

Smartsheet’s “sheets” contain critical project information such as project description, status, and due dates. They also show which team members have been assigned to which task(s), and allow users to upload files, leave comments, and seek updates, among other things.

Sheets can be viewed in various ways, including a spreadsheet-like grid view, Smartsheet Kanban-style cards, Gantt charts, and calendar view. Other Smartsheet project management features include cross-project summary views, mobile capacity, cloud access, automated workflows, dashboards, reporting, and resource management.

Smartsheet’s real-time view of tasks across entire projects offers a high level of transparency, making it a popular choice for effective project management.

What is Smartsheet used for?

Smartsheet is ideal for individuals, project managers, and businesses who seek to manage the entire project and portfolio management lifecycle (along with resources, timelines, and other essential characteristics) using a tool independent of any platform. Some of Smartsheet’s key features and areas of use include:

• Project management, monitoring, and controlling
• Program and portfolio management
• Content management
• Project resource management
• Process management
• Digital asset management
• Seamless team collaboration
• Streamlined solution center
• Powerful integrations and add-ons
• Task automation

Smartsheet: Pros and cons

See below for a list of Smartsheet’s pros and cons.

Pros

• Smartsheet is an ideal project management platform for individuals and project managers who prefer a spreadsheet layout.
• The Smartsheet layout allows users to build and move tasks within each appointed row and column.
• From attaching documents to adding due dates to notes, building each task keeps project notes organized, making them easy to track and share.
• Smartsheet lets team members collaborate on content, view timelines, comment, and assign tasks within multiple views.
• Smartsheet’s powerful analytics and advanced reporting capabilities make it easy to consolidate crucial information from multiple sheets into a single report in just a few clicks or taps. In doing so, users can identify trends and potential bottlenecks to continuously improve. Users can also publish and share reports with team members, departments, stakeholders, or anyone else who should be in the loop.
• Smartsheet uses top-of-the-line data protection standards to keep your team, data, and business secure. It offers dozens of security features to prevent unauthorized access, including two-factor authentication, single sign-on (SSO), granular user access controls, secure data centers, and more.
• Smartsheet outshines most work management solutions with an incredibly comprehensive set of integrations, connectors, intelligent workflows, and automation tools. Despite its power, basic automation takes only a few minutes, thanks to Smartsheet’s drag-and-drop automation builder.

Cons

While Smartsheet is a valuable platform for project managers, like all work management solutions, it is not without its disadvantages.

• The biggest drawback is that Smartsheet lacks time-tracking features. For many teams, time tracking is an integral part of the business process for tracking project details.
• Smartsheet does not have a built-in native chat option or great integration with any third-party chat apps; users must find a work-around for collaboration chat. Adding additional programs into the business workflow increases costs and complications.
• There is a steep learning curve for those without experience with spreadsheets.
• Smartsheet has many valuable features, but it is time-consuming for users to get comfortable within the platform and take advantage of the software’s elements.

Top Smartsheet alternatives

While Smartsheet remains a popular choice and has many robust features to suit various needs, you may seek an alternative platform if you want a less costly solution requiring better integrations, time tracking, and native chat. Popular Smartsheet alternatives include Jira, Microsoft Project for the Web, Monday.com, Trello, and Wrike.

Conclusion

Smartsheet is one of the most potent spreadsheet-style project management tools today. Smartsheet offers a modern approach to project management for teams of various sizes by focusing on the work people do—regardless of the type, methodology, or process. Smartsheet’s flexible platform supports hybrid work that drives better communication, collaboration, and scale processes. While the platform is built to empower individuals and teams, it does have certain restrictions. So, if you decide to switch to a PPM system that better suits your needs, you should learn the most efficient way.