Smartsheet is one of the most popular collaborative work management platforms available today. With powerful features for task tracking, resource planning, project roadmaps, and more, Smartsheet empowers teams to plan, capture, manage, automate, and report on work from anywhere.
While Smartsheet offers an abundance of ready built templates to suit different use cases, the platform is also extremely flexible to tailor to each team’s unique needs. With some simple customizations, you can optimize Smartsheet and transform how your group collaborates.
Here are 5 straightforward ways to customize Smartsheet and align it better to your team’s workflow requirements:
1. Build Customized Views
One Smartsheet workbook can contain multiple tabs with entirely different sets of columns representing data points relevant for particular contexts. You can create individual sheets within a workbook prefiltered to only show certain categories of info important for specialized use.
For example, managers could make an Executive Summary sheet showing just key metrics and deadlines without project minutiae. Engineers might filter task lists to mainly technical assignment details. Tweaking visibility this way allows the same base data to be sliced multiple ways.
2. Create Custom Fields and Forms
Smartsheet’s field types go far beyond just free text cells. You can add specialized columns like Dropdown Lists, Checkbox Sets, Date Pickers, Ratings Fields and more robust Form Elements tailored to capture specific data types needed for your workflow.
Client Intake forms, Equipment Inspection checklists, and Bug Tracking itemization in Smartsheet can all be powered by building custom column presets fitting data gathering against particular activities based on team requirements. Advanced dynamic fields make customization infinitely scalable.
3. Build Custom Reports and Dashboards
Smartsheet has native reporting features to export data into shareable formats beyond the grid view tabs. You can choose elements from your base sheets like key metrics, critical task listings or project calendar rollups to output as highly visual Reports.
Templates allow one-click generation of rich graphical reports or dense data-driven tables sent to stakeholders. Automating regular report output this way provides visibility needed to align dispersed teams and demonstrate progress to interested parties based on intelligent information direction.
4. Automate Workflows with Triggers
Power Users can set up Triggers for automating if/then workflows without coding. Checking off task completion can notify resources assignments that get auto-updated. Forms submitted could trigger automated emails sent to relevant people instantly. New projects added adjust dashboards accordingly.
Triggers seamlessly connect Smartsheet actions across your systems into automated pipelines improving process efficiency. One change cascades updates precisely where needed, reducing manual oversight chasing updates person-to-person through undependable channels. Custom Triggers solve this.
5. Integrate with Hundreds of Apps
From chat tools like Slack to encode repositories, calendar apps, advanced analytics, billing and procurement systems, Smartsheet integrates with hundreds of complementary platforms via APIs. This means dashboards can be auto-populated with data from your existing stack to create unified views.
Prebuilt integrations require just a few clicks to activate useful automations syncing data into Smartsheets without displacement headaches ditching legacy systems. Custom app integration is also achievable working directly with Smartsheet Consultant teams such as Cronos, guiding setup and configuration.
While already an intuitive platform, taking advantage of Smartsheet’s customization capabilities transforms its utility to directly empower specialized teamwork requirements. Moving beyond basic templates to tailored views, fields, reports, triggers and integrations allows both management and execution needs to be met efficiently in a single robust productivity environment. Teams collaborating within a cleanly customized Smartsheet solution optimize process and output quality simultaneously.
