Best Of

When I first discovered Smartsheet, and all that it was capable of, I immediately set out on a journey to introduce it to my school district (this was back in 2017). While this was a huge undertaking, I knew that it would be worth it in the end. At first, the struggle was always helping teams understand why Smartsheet was more than "just another spreadsheet", once that hurdle was cleared, I set out to develop a full-scale New Hire Induction solution. This solution has evolved multiple times over the years and I am very proud of the current status of this solution. Once people were able to experience first-hand just how much time could be saved by using Smartsheet, they were hooked. Since we are a K-12 Public School District, we do tend to utilize Smartsheet in many different ways across multiple departments, but I believe that is why Smartsheet is such a valuable tool for us. Especially now that we, like many other school districts across the nation, are experiencing declining student enrollment which has a direct impact on funding for the district. Another impact is that we are experiencing is when folks retire or resign from our district, more often than not, their positions are not being backfilled. This results in job duties needing to be absorbed by remaining staff, which continues to put a strain on everyone. Smartsheet, with its powerful capabilities, has been a game-changer for us during these times.

The main way we have handled barriers to adoption of Smartsheet is by creating a dashboard for our licensed users, providing them with initial onboarding training, and then providing them with the resources within our district for support with their department's adoption of Smartsheet. I have also been working on developing our internal support team (our power users) member's knowledge and ensuring they know and understand the importance of taking the time to listen to our newest licensed users. This helps us with meeting them where they are at with their learning and implementation. I love hearing about their successes, and even their pain-points, then helping to guide them on ways to fix and adjust their solutions to eliminate any remaining pain-points. Watching our departments staff members change their mindset from "this is just another spreadsheet", to "wow, this is so easy and fun and is saving me a ton of time in my day", are just a few examples of why I love working with Smartsheet and sharing with everyone and helping find their own success with using Smartsheet in their department.

Happy 2026, Community.

I am so happy to welcome a brand-new year with all of you. I hope you’ve had a wonderful holiday season and are feeling inspired to make 2026 one for the books!

We closed 2025 with your creative holiday ideas, and honestly, I wish I could add them all to the calendar. Based on your responses, I think we definitely need to declare our own unofficial "Digital Detox" day, don’t you? 😉

To start the year on a high note, let’s jump into our first Question of the Month for 2026! Remember: This is your chance to earn your first badge of the year, and connect with your peers.

What is one new idea that you're excited to put into practice in 2026?

With a full year ahead, there are so many opportunities to try something new. Is it a professional goal? A clever new solution you’re planning to build in Smartsheet? Or maybe a challenging new recipe you’re finally going to tackle? (Cooks and bakers in the Community, I see you! 👀)

We can’t wait to hear your plans and cheer you on. Share your ideas in the comments below to start collecting our brand new badge design for 2026. ⬇️

About Question of the Month:

We kick off each month with a new question. These monthly ice breakers are just one way to help you get to know your Smartsheet peers and rack up some badges and points in the process.

Everyone who participates by answering the question prior to the end of the month will automatically receive a unique participant badge once the question closes at the end of the month.

In addition to the participant badge, the top three answers based on Community member votes will receive the Top Answer badge. To vote on an answer click on the upvote icon associated with an answer in the comments below. Multiple votes allowed and encouraged!

I’m excited to put into practice in 2026 the work I’ve been building over the past week — turning my Smartsheet Admin API data extraction into a fully automated workflow.

I’ve been developing Python scripts to extract and analyze admin data such as user access, group governance, seat utilization, and workspace/asset usage. In 2026, I plan to publish this as a fully working GitHub project and set it up with GitHub Actions to run on a daily schedule, automatically refreshing insights without manual effort.

At the moment, the setup requires manual updates of session cookies and XSRF tokens due to server-side constraints, but I’m looking forward to refining this further and exploring more sustainable approaches.

The goal is to make governance and visibility proactive instead of reactive, giving teams and leadership a clear view of adoption, usage trends, and optimization opportunities over time.

Really looking forward to refining this and learning from others in the community too!