Smartsheet Updates: Discussions Revamp and Enhancements

With 90,000 companies using it, Smartsheet is the go-to cloud app for work management and collaboration. The August release enhances the card view, Sights, and formulas. Also included, a major revamp of attachments and discussions. Finally, this release fixes several bugs.

1. Sights Enhancements

Smartsheet recently made Sights available for purchase by Team and Enterprise plan users. With Sights, widgets are used to display your data sources and allow you to generate reports on the projects in progress. Now, Sights offers flexible sizing and placement along with a full-screen view. They also consolidated some widgets and aligned shortcuts.

Widgets

Using a 15x15px grid, Sights users have precise control over the placement of data and images. Widgets can also be grouped and you can leave blank spaces. To simplify creating new sights, the metric and sheet data merged into a single Metric widget. Finally, Shortcut and Shortcut List merged into a Shortcut Widget.

Full Screen

Lastly, Sights received a full-screen view. With a simple click, it expands to fill the screen.

2. Card View Enhancements

Another recent addition, Card View is a highly visual way for teams communicate and collaborate. This update continues improvements to the functionality of the cards. There is a free trial running for people to try out this view.

Expand/Collapse Lanes

By hovering over a lane, you now have the option of collapsing it. This handy feature is particularly useful when working with a large number of uncategorized lanes. With uncategorized lanes collapsed, you have a clearer picture of the work in progress. This option also helps when you need to work with six or more lanes. Collapse the ones you don’t need to stay focused on while you work. Clicking on a collapsed lane reopens it.

Rename Lanes

Double clicking on a Lane lets you quickly rename it. All of the cards associated with that project are immediately updated.

3.Formula Enhancements

To improve the speed of calculations, Smartsheet added eight new formulas. These include: =lookup(), =parent(), =ancestors(), =join(), =iferror(), =iserror(), =match(), and =index(). Some, like =iferror(), enable quick suppression of errors. Others like =parent() and =ancestors() simplify the process of gathering rows of data together for custom formatting or specific reports.

4. Comments

With this release, Smartsheet changed the name of “Discussions” to “Comments”. The name change is also a change in functionality. Now you can comment on rows, cards, or sheets with a click. You are also able to add documents and the entire team is notified of changes. The new system makes it easy to keep track of changes. It is also easier to sort threads and comments and keep them with the project.

Conclusion

These updates to Smartsheet demonstrate the companies desire to stay responsive to customer requests. Comments on the update blog show users excited about the changes but concerned they don’t go far enough, especially with regard to the new comment section. A user named Eugene lamented about the lack of the oft-requested @mention feature and Alex expressed concern about the new system made for a crowded display. Diana Ramos, Smartsheet content writer, replied to these and other customer comments. Ramos explained that these changes are a part of the companies roadmap towards building a more intuitive and faster application. For more on the latest announcements and updates, visit Smartsheet’s, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn or YouTube page.

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