Versatile and Powerful Tool

My company was already using Smartsheet for basic task tracking when I started. Upon discovering how we could use dashboards, our utilization took off! We have now designed solutions for departments company-wide, improving management's visibility to workloads and processes. It's impressive how many problems Smartsheet has been able to solve.

Pros

- Ease of Use - No need to involve programmers to create custom solutions - Versatility - customizable sheets and dashboards for different departments and needs - Support - AMAZING user forum, help pages, support department

Cons

Row and cell link limitations - I bump up against the cell link limitations often, although I can work around them by saving my metrics into multiple sheets.

Smartsheet is preferred from multiple fast-moving projects

Satisfied. I manage >25 projects that vary in size and detail. I would not rely on any other project management program that I have used in the past.

Pros

Easy to get in, set up, and maintain small-medium size projects. Quick to learn, easy to use.

Cons

I would like more intelligence around the columns: 1) more specific formatting choices, like setting the duration to hours, separating effort and duration; 2) Predecessor columns that intelligently follow the task, not only the row number.

Excel on speed

I have a running joke with my colleagues that goes along the lines of "have I told you how much I love smartsheet?" This is generally when I have discovered a new wow feature - e.g. the ability to lock in column formulae. They smile and say "yes you have mentioned it"

Pros

It's core infrastructure is very easy to understand. As an accountant I saw a spreadsheet like thing and shouted hurrah I get this. Then I realised that was just a beginning but a beginning that was good because it hooked me. Then I started to get that there are forms and the spreadsheets are really databases in disguise from which you can easily produce reports with no programming skills needed (other than those I knew anyway). Then there are dashboards that you can configure to your own requirements. I particularly love that you can change information on the reports and it changes on the underlying spreadsheets (databases). For one business I worked for I changed what had been a daily and weekend nightmare for the owner into an automated process that took half an hour. Literally life changing for him.

Cons

It's strength is it's weakness. Like a spreadsheet it can be too flexible which can be dangerous if you don't know what you are doing. Other software has guardrails, this doesn't. If you take care it's fine but you can find yourself changing something and it having knock on effects. It's not that the underlying data is compromised by this but the reporting can be. For example if you change the name of a database column the reports won't be able to find it again which means that on the reports and dashboards you find a blank where there should be data. So take care, but if you do, it's magic!

Solid software for quick and easy spreadsheets & Gantt charts

While I prefer Smartsheet for Gantt charts, or quick and simple spreadsheets due to its ease of use, I have been disappointed with all of the other marketed features, and would recommend Google Sheets in general, since it is similarly collaborative, has better options for in-depth formulas, customizing of sheets and automated emailing with query's and G-script, and is free.

Pros

Smartsheet is my preferred software for Gantt charts, and for quick & simple spreadsheets. The formatting features are especially effective, such as easy indenting and quick checkbox options that can be used with formulas. Gantt charts on Smartsheet are quick and intuitive with all the options I would like to have. Dashboards can be a nice way to have an overview with links to different sheets if you have a project with several documents, and are willing to spend the extra time and money to set it up.

Cons

The big Con with Smartsheet is that it lacks the in-depth features of similar spreadsheet software that is also usually freely available. Conditional formatting the way you would like it to work can take a surprisingly long time, as it can take many conditions (often one per column per action) to accomplish what you would think would take a handful. Automatic email sending from sheets sounds great but is still not very fleshed out, and options are pretty limited. Complex formulas usually need to be done in several hidden columns or they can end up taking large paragraphs of hard-to-edit text and numbers due to lack of formula options. This can also make complicated spreadsheets pretty slow. Bugs occur infrequently, but make me prefer to double check important sheets.

I love Smartsheet

While as an overarching company, my employer does not use Smartsheet, I have continued to use it personally on my projects to track progress in simple to update, easy to baseline format. I have used Smartsheet in this fashion for years -- its a much needed tool to keep you my back pocket.

Pros

What I think that Smartsheet really does well is how easy it is to use it. It is very similar in function to Excel, but has a lot of the important features that you need to baseline and track a project of any size. Its a welcome deter from the intensity of other PM software like Microsoft Project, without losing essential functionality.

Cons

Smartsheet is very simple to use - but because of some of that scaled back UI, there is some lost functionality. Some of the tricks and maneuvers you have to pull for things like conditional formatting or cell types can be a bit off-putting. It's also sometimes difficult to tell where user error plays a role in mathematic mistakes. I'd like to see more effort put into these areas.