What needs improvement with Smartsheet?

Although I can't pinpoint anything specific right now, there is always room for improvement. Initially, there were issues like dropdowns. Those have been overcome.

I want to improve baselines, predecessor-successor relationships, and the ability to use manual starts and stops while keeping relationships intact. Changing dates and durations can be convoluted, unlike in Microsoft Project. There are many things I'm used to in other software that don't happen in Smartsheet. It's offset by how easy it is to link sheets and pull data at higher levels, but figuring out why I can't change data sometimes can be frustrating.

The solution should include integrations with other platforms or software. Smartsheet can look to integrate with financial software like QuickBooks, project management software, construction software, IT software, and SAP to pull data from different databases.

Every feature for text mining, even process mining, would be a plus. We have about two hundred contract management events daily. First, I share specific documents. I talk about the search function because we assume it has a thorough search when we read the catalog. But when you test it, you realize it doesn't search within attachments. So, it's a great search function, but you need the brand folder. It has many options and can become complex.

Asana has a modern look and feel, particularly its agile project management interface featuring movable cards between columns.

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.

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

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

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.

Smartsheet needs to improve the user interface.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Smartsheet could improve by having seamless integration with Azure Board.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Their sales and support representatives are in need of training. When I first contacted the vendor, I was looking for more information about Smartsheet because we wanted to partner with them to provide solutions to our customers. As one of the owners, the task was delegated to me. However, they did not respond to me because they wanted to speak with the president of the company. Yet, the reason that I took on the task was that the company president doesn't have time. Trying to jump a level is not a good practice because as they continued attempting to contact the company president, I was waiting for the call, unaware. Clearly, companies want to reach the decision-makers but sometimes, it's the decision-makers that are reaching out. The integration with Microsoft products should be improved.

I'd like to have access to more sheets, and I don't know if this relates to the price I'm paying or that the product needs improvement, but they limit the number of sheets and it's not enough. I think it's around 10 and I've reached capacity. I think it's a little chintzy on what you get for that kind of money and any individual using it would want more than 10 sheets.

The downside of Smartsheet is that there are some security concerns. Security is quite good with the enterprise version, but there are some loopholes. It should be easier to restrict the users within the organization from sharing sheets outside of the domain. We were able to restrict people from sharing sheets with anyone who was not in our domain, but it could be easier. We also found it hard to restrict certain user groups from adding attachments to sheets. We have analytical groups in our company who should not be allowed to add attachments because they can attach sensitive information, which is something we don't want. The ability to prevent certain features of Smartsheet for a user group is not there. I couldn't find a way to do that. This is where there is room for improvement. It already has a really powerful Export to Excel feature, but it can have an Excel add-on. It can have something just like an Excel integration or something that would make it easier for people who aren't really familiar with Smartsheet but are more familiar with Excel. The sign-in process was actually confusing. The way to set up single sign-on wasn't too easy in the beginning, and it was hard to get hold of customer service. They should make it easier to set up SSO. Smartsheet's customer service definitely needs to be improved. They create a ticket, and then it disappears. It is very hard to understand to whom that ticket is assigned.

The dashboard is not user-friendly, it needs improvement. There are many backgrounds that have to be in place to make it user-friendly.