Best Of
Meet Matt Johnson, our October Member Spotlight! π
Say hey, hey, hey, to our October Member Spotlight and Community Champion, @Matt Johnson!
Matt lives in a suburb of Nashville and works as a Senior Project Manager at Sevan Multi-Site Solutions, a Smartsheet Aligned Partner. He has been with the company for over six years and is a key contributor in program management solutions in the construction, design and data analytics space for global clients.
When he was first introduced to Smartsheet, he was on an account that had "smart people doing great things," but those things were also siloed and not scalable. He was soon tasked with implementing Smartsheet and training his team on it. He found the set up process to be smooth, with Smartsheet being flexible enough to change with evolving processes.
"Adoption was more challenging," he says, "but in the end, we got there. Other accounts soon wanted to replicate what we had done, followed by our clients."
These days, Matt says he's found reports to be a favorite feature among a variety of users he's worked with. "The ability to expand and collapse different sets of data has proven very useful across the board," he explains. "Listing them on a homepage-type dashboard is a great way to get people to use dashboards overall."
Along with other fellow Community Champions, Matt just attended our customer conference ENGAGE last month. He had a blast meeting other Community members in person and having face-to-face interactions - including with Smartsheet CEO Mark Mader (see photo above). "And of course, I enjoyed learning about Smartsheet's Generative AI efforts," he adds. "It's fun to see the future and know it's not that far away."
What's Matt's advice for members looking to become a future Community Champion? Keep it concise when it comes to support content.
"Be as clear as possible in both your questions and your answers. Also, if the conversation is becoming more than one or two exchanges, check out the other person's signature block and reach out to them offline for more detailed discussions. And then don't forget to recap it back on the forum thread to explain the outcome so others can learn as well."
When Matt isn't helping others on Community, he enjoys sports photography with a focus on mountain biking and BMX ("anything where kids are learning and having fun").
Thank you Matt for all that you do!
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Do you know someone in the Community who should be next month's Member Spotlight? Nominate themΒ here. π€©
Alison C.
Re: Ready, set, share your solution! π Showcase your skills for a chance to win unique prizes.
A big thank you to everyone who shared their creativity and solutions with us. Keep an eye out for participant, winner, runner-up and published solution badges headed your way.
Congrats to our Community Created Template Showcase winners: @Michelle Choate 2, Nicholas Miron, and @Lauren Dominique, as well as our runner-ups who will also have their solution featured in the template gallery: @TWO21 , @DesireeJones , and @MCorbin.
Arsineh
Re: Update Request Customization - descriptions and headers like a Form
I want to send an update form that is customised like a standard row creation form. There are enough discussion topics with people asking for this or similar functionality. Please bump this up the to do list.
At the moment you only get the field description, no help text.
It is impossible to create multiline text entry boxes.
Make fields clearly read only when they are locked.
Robin Herrick
Re: Our first ENGAGE challenge is here - Smartsheet Travel Diaries πΊοΈ + Bonus Giveaway
I am an Analyst, and multiple screens is essential. And it is not uncommon that they are all focused on something related to Smartsheet! That is being productive!!!!
Sherry Fox
Re: Activity Log should reflect all changes made to a sheet (in detail) including Workflows
I agree with TKP here. The activity log tracks everything users do but not everything is held accountable. As funny as that sounds, we really need to know everything our automations are doing when troubleshooting.
LJTexas
Re: October Question of the Month π Join the conversation and receive a badge
I have seen a few things already here in the thread that I could second.
Parenthood. I won't go into how scared I was and how much I was second guessing everything about myself when I found out that I was going to be a dad. It still has its moments, but overall I realize now that I was definitely more prepared than I had initially thought.
Leading a team. I was young and very early on in my working life. I felt so much pressure and almost turned it down. Then I realized that I needed my team even more than they needed me. Haha. They knew their jobs and expectations. All I had to do was manage and coordinate.
Public speaking. I am EXTREMELY introverted. I do NOT like being the center of attention. I prefer to be in a corner somewhere people watching. Recently though I was asked to say a few words in front of a relatively small group, and it really wasn't all that bad. I wouldn't call it "fun", but it was doable.
The next day I found myself preparing for a potentially much larger audience. We knew the topics and the general vibe, but we were just winging it as far as what would be said. I am pretty sure I just blacked out and went on auto-pilot for most of it, but after it was over I got a lot of very positive feedback.
I won't say that I am going to actively pursue public speaking opportunities, but I realize now that it isn't quite as terrible as I thought. Of course I had a great audience for both engagements which also helped tremendously.
Collaborating with "higher ups". I was on the "bottom rung" of the ladder in my position at the time. My supervisor's manager's Vice President asked for my input on what to tell the President of the company. I actually asked if they were sure they wanted my input and made sure to throw in plenty of disclaimers about not experience in the corporate side since not only was I in a more production type role, but I was new to that role as well.
After some conversation, I realized it was the same as interviewing for a job somewhere. The other person isn't better than you, and you aren't better than them. Regardless of their title, they are people too.
Paul Newcome
Re: Adding Column Descriptions to Reports
Encountered this myself today! Please add this feature!
MariaCurtis
Re: Shortcut to Dashboard Header / Bookmarks
Basic HTML allows for '#anchors' - can we have something like this against dashboard widgets? This would allow use to easily navigate down and up within a dashboard page.
Adrian Mandile CHESS
Re: Join the conversation on STEM education and help nurture the next generation of visionaries
This is such an awesome thread! It is often wonderful to read about trailblazing women in STEM. Not only do they have remarkable stories, the contributions to their field / humanity are always so inspiring to learn about.
Highlighting Valerie Thomas, born 1943 in Baltimore, who graduated college top of her class in Physics (only one of two women in the program) and in 1964 right-out-of-school started at NASA. She worked on the first team of the Landsat program, where she developed methods to decode large amounts of data from satellites, specifically imagery and image file formats. In 1980, she developed and patented an Illusion Transmitter, which was capable of sending three-dimensional images using a concave mirror. Afterwards, still at NASA, she oversaw a managerial position on the Space Physics Analytics Network, which is like a proto-internet that connected scientists across the globe. I believe she is still mentoring emerging scientists to this day and has been awarded multiple commendations at NASA. Awesome human.
Kyle Chipman