Customizable interface and Gantt chart flexibility streamline project management
What is our primary use case?
My use cases for Smartsheet always revolve around small to medium-sized projects to define a standard project and assignment, work breakdown structure, and develop a timeline from start to finish.
I've always wanted to use the resourcing feature, but it has been super complicated and never sufficient. The overhead for capacity management has never fully realized enough value.
The dashboards are rather complex and not intuitive, requiring a full custom implementation in order to manage multiple programs. We're going to try and set that up now for this one national project, but from a pure project management perspective, Smartsheet works great as a low-cost replacement for Microsoft Project. I feel it equals and parallels the capabilities of Microsoft Project.
What is most valuable?
What I appreciate best about Smartsheet is the straight Gantt chart and its flexibility. The user interface is very customizable, allowing for easy segmentation of workstreams and leveling tasks.
Because of this customization, you can tailor your views for rapid project reporting as well. It's really about the user interface and basic project management, making it very fast.
What needs improvement?
The initial setup from a project perspective is very easy, simple, and fast.
However, from a reporting and dashboard perspective, it definitely requires more customization, but the end result of the dashboards is very flexible and customizable. There is value in developing those dashboards.
Out of the box, it provides a five-level setup, but after a full customization, you can reach a level eight of satisfaction. It does require an investment.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using Smartsheet for over 15 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have never had any issues with stability; it has always been good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
My impressions on scalability are that it is very good. Definitely, building out a project plan and multi-level integrated projects, such as a program with integrations and references, is very mature and capable.
How are customer service and support?
I think their support team is low quality. They're low and lack response, which is not good for customers. I wouldn't rely on their customer support at all.
I would give the support team a three out of ten.
How was the initial setup?
Using Smartsheet is very easy. The initial setup from a project perspective is very easy, simple, and fast.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I do recommend it to other people. I highly recommend Smartsheet for all projects based on budget. For me, it is second to Planisware.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I would give Smartsheet an eight out of ten. It's my go-to at the moment. This review rates Smartsheet 8 out of 10.
Smartsheet review
What do you like best about the product?
Helpful for creating project plans and lists
What do you dislike about the product?
It would be nice if there were more options for the dashboards
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Organization of tasks, project-related items, RACI
Smartsheet has become a frequently used tool for me, and helps me on my day to day work.
What do you like best about the product?
Ease of use: if you are familiar with excel, google sheets etc, Smartsheet becomes intuitive very quickly. flexibility in views is also very useful, when selecting Gantt chart view, timeline view, etc.
Frequency of use: I use Smartsheet at least 3 times a week, sometimes even daily.
Ease of implementation: The automation has become very familiar; I still have some things to learn but it's easy to implement reminders and automated notifications/emails.
Customer Support: I haven't really asked for any customer support, so I don't have any experience in that area.
What do you dislike about the product?
the outlook integration, I wish there could be more automatization instead of having to use InfoSpark for using outlook connectors
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Automating reminders and emails, also it helps me track tasks and show in reporting like the Gantt chart view and the timeline view.
Great Program Managment Tool That Is Accessible to You Team
What do you like best about the product?
Shareability to internal and external partners
What do you dislike about the product?
There is a bit of a learning curve in the beginning and can be daunting at first since due to the impressive amount of capabilities
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Creating realistic goals and timelines can be challenging. Being able to work through and share every step of the program timeline makes it easier to explain to stakeholders why durations take as much time as they do. It also sparks collaboration and which can lead to team member buy in and agreement on how long things take to accomplish and what realistic and unrealistic durations are to complete tasks.
User friendly and versatile!
What do you like best about the product?
I love several things about Smartsheets: Versatility in the dashboards and charting, advanced functionality of the spreadsheets, and the overall collaboration aspect that it provides as a program. It's super easy to figure out and use, though it takes a while to genuinely figure out what all you can do with it.
What do you dislike about the product?
As a spreadsheet, I miss some of the functionality of Excel. Though Smartsheet gives me more tools for charting and dashboards I feel it lacks some of the wonderful functionality in creating and managing spreadsheets on the basic level. It provides more advanced options than basic functions we have become use to.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Smartsheet has solved many of our collaboration issues within our team. Being able to work within one program to build sheets and dashboards has been a great streamlining process.
SmartSheet Review
What do you like best about the product?
Automation, ability to assign and organize tasks.
What do you dislike about the product?
Tha tautomation only works by "comumn" and not by cell.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Automate emails and ensuring all tasks are complete.
Smartsheets used for scientific product tracking for R&D and Manufacturing
What do you like best about the product?
Ease of use and organization. Customer support is very helpful and easy to work with. Easy to implement into processes and high use of frequency in department.
What do you dislike about the product?
Smartsheets is being used in this instance to track chemical production for both R&D and GMP products. Although the filters can be limited to certain people for approval/reviews it is not a controlled website so vigilance is required for GMP production tracking.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Ordering of chemicals for production, tracking chemical production, and assigning/tasking out chemical production responsibilities within group. Also provides transparency so I can view other departmental requests s they are going through submission and approval process. Really like the custom notifications at different levels within the process.
Senior Associate
What do you like best about the product?
The ability to work live with both my team and the client. The ability to add automations and create parent child relationships
What do you dislike about the product?
The amount of manual equations that have to be created in order to create dashboards. The inability to link dependent milestones & tasks so that dates change automatically based on the dependent item
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The ability work like with clients and not have to get add Ons of additional products
The experience on smartsheet has been satisfactory.
What do you like best about the product?
Smartsheet provide automation of data and dashboard simplicity.
What do you dislike about the product?
Limitation on some formula implementation.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Showing the portfolio of project at one single interface.
Great tool for creating appealing Gantt charts in collaboration with colleagues and clients.
What do you like best about the product?
Easy to use and a great tool for creating project plan in collaboration with others.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some clients can't access the plans I create. It needs more controls on the timeline presentation (i.e. years, quarters etc..) in the same way that MS Project allows you to do.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I need to create detailed plans with a range of clients.
