Shaine Mata

Lately, I have been working with a very useful collaboration and project management web service at SmartSheet.com. Well, actually, I’ve only worked with the Project Management portion. I don’t have much of a team with whom to share, but if I did, it would be through SmartSheet.

The appeal of SmartSheet, as opposed to other project management software, is that it runs like a spreadsheet. I think you would agree that most of us will jump into Microsoft Excel, or some other spreadsheet software, whenever we have a project. The appeal of project management through spreadsheet is that you can pretty much make lists for all your tasks. You can make a list of things to do, add a column of people who are responsible for the tasks, add a column for due dates, add a column for comments, and so on. A spreadsheet effectively flattens out a project. Another benefit is that you can email a spreadsheet to anybody and have reasonable certainty that they can view it. SmartSheet takes this part of project management via spreadsheet and improves it.

Having said all that, SmartSheet is not a spreadsheet, nor do they claim to be. You’re not going to use their service to crunch numbers. Given that the service is web-based, your browser will writhe in pain if you try to run a project with 100,000 lines. Most of us don’t have projects of that magnitude anyway. So, don’t go signing up for the service thinking that you found an online spreadsheet.

At this point, you might be thinking, “big deal. So you can make lists of things to do on the web. So what?”

Well, that’s not all. No, my friend, that is not all. Smartsheet also allows you to share a workspace where you keep a collection of SmartSheets. If you have a company with different departments, for example, you can create a workspace for every department. You can then create groups of people who have access to those workspaces. Yes, we’re talking about group-based permissions. But that is not all. You can even assign permissions down to the user level. So, you assign those permissions to a workspace, individual sheets, or, get this, even down to individual line items within a sheet. How’s that for fine control?

That’s not all, by far. Another advantage of using SmartSheet is that it gives you version control. Since the document is stored and accessed online, there is only ever one version available. On top of that, I understand that if one user updates a sheet, the changes are updated on the screens of others who are accessing the same document. And while we are on the topic of version control, SmartSheet also lets you look at the history of individual cells to track the changes. How do you like that?

One of the limitations that a spreadsheet has for project management is keeping track of other documents or information. SmartSheet eschews this problem handily. You can attach documents to individual sheets or to individual rows within the sheet. You might be thinking why you would need such a thing. Here is an example. Let’s say that you have a network to plan and install. There are some documents that have to be available globally, like tech support numbers, default network settings, inventories, etc. These are generally useful across the whole project and can therefore be attached to the entire SmartSheet. But, let’s say that you have to customize a workstation or server. On the rows where that computer is customized, you can attach documents that lay out the customized settings. In fact, if any changes come up, you can edit that document, and then re-upload it with the new settings. This is how I’ve been using SmartSheet, as a way to keep track of the computers on a network and all the settings of each desktop.

Probably, the coolest feature of SmartSheet, for me, is that I can export the sheet as an Excel file or as a PDF. This is awesome because you can take your PDF down to the copy center and quickly duplicate your project to hand out to all the stakeholders. You can also, if you really must, email the project spreadsheet to somebody.

Under the current version of SmartSheet, there are some features that take some digging around to understand. I think, however, you’ll find that it doesn’t require too much learning. I really like that they have tutorial videos on how to do pretty much anything that SmartSheet can do. I was speaking with somebody from SmartSheet recently. He tells me that there are some big changes coming this Summer that will make SmartSheet even easier to use without losing out on functionality.

If you are a small business and are looking for a way to keep track of those things your company does, SmartSheet would be a great subscription. It’s not an accounting system, so don’t get the wrong idea. It’s a project management and collaboration platform that can add great value to your business. I wrote about Microsoft SharePoint a while back. I think either SmartSheet or SharePoint are probably one of the solutions you should consider. They are both powerful in getting your team on track, although how they go about it is totally different. However, if you are not ready to have an Intranet or don’t need one because you have a virtual team, then SmartSheet is definitely the way to go. You won’t need special software, just a browser; and you won’t need special hardware, any computer with Internet access will do. When it comes to a mobile workforce, running the show via the web is pretty powerful. Check them out.