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after digging a little more I just made a further comment in another thread of this same topic: https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/481250#Comment_481250?utm_source=community-search&utm_medium=organic-search&utm_term=new+licensing

It is not helpful that that the term "Free" users is being applied to what was previously called "collaborators" because they are (or were) entirely different things. A Free user had a basic level account to try out smartsheet to see if it is the right solution for them and it was quite limited in its capabilities. The collaborators are people who interact with the sheets that licensed users build. They have no ability to edit the structure / formulas etc of the smartsheet they are given shared access to. They can only edit data in the cells (where access is given). They can be allocated access to "Admin", "Editor can share", "Editor cannot share", "Commenter" or "Viewer". full details of who can do what in the old and new model seems to be laid out in this article:

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2483288/sharing-permission-levels

Its possible, BUT NOT CLEAR, that those with legacy collaborator model licenses may be able to continue to operate that way for the life of their licenes, but if not then this is a huge change to all the existing (legacy) smartsheet license holders. I hear people in smartsheet talking about the new model but no-one seems to be making it clear who that model applies to. The moment the member model is applied to my business that will trigger a change of platform for me.

This is my 10th year of being a licensed (legacy) user of Smartsheet and I currently have 10 licensed users on my account. Not a huge account but I bet thousands upon thousands of other business users are similar usage to mine.

If Smartsheet intends to force "legacy collaborators" into the new member model - the hundreds of collaborators (colleagues, clients and suppliers) who check boxes, select choices from drop-downs, put in comments in comments fields, fill out forms etc on our sheets created by the licensed users will ALL now be considered as "members" and required to have a full member license.

IF that is the case then Smartsheet just completely destroyed the model and I will have no choice other than to change to a different platform because there is no way that the collaborators (or myself) are going to pay for a full license for the miniscule amount of usage they have by updating fields in sheets.

Interesting how this massive change in license policy coincides with the acquisition of Smartsheet by Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners.

Hi @MWilkesen

Here is the announcement post that has more information:

I still can't copy and paste this is frustrating

This is my 10th year of being a licensed user of Smartsheet and I currently have 9 licensed users on my account. Not a huge account but I bet thousands upon thousands of other business users are similar usage to mine.

If I am understanding this discussion correctly - the hundreds of collaborators (colleagues, clients and suppliers) who check boxes, select choices from drop-downs, put in comments in comments fields, fill out forms etc on our sheets created by the licensed users will ALL now be considered as "members" and required to have a full license?

IF that is the case then Smartsheet just completely destroyed the model and I will have no choice other than to change to a different platform because there is no way that the collaborators (or myself) are going to pay for a full license for the miniscule amount of usage they have by updating fields in sheets.

Interesting how this massive change in license policy coincides with the acquisition of Smartsheet by Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners.

Hello

I'm a little confused about the new subscription model.

I have some new team members and I want to assign them a licence. Does that now mean 'Member'? I can't see anywhere to assign licences anymore.

I find the true-up explanation very confusing. I have some people that I share sheets with which I need them to contribute to so they were Guests. Now I see them as a Member (Provisional) that are going to True-up. I don't want them to have Member access but I can only change them to Viewer which won't allow them to update a sheet (an Action Log that they contribute to).

Can someone help me navigate this new model as I'm just totally confused by it!

Thanks

Katie

If you are going through the true up you are going to want to read this experience. Lets face it, no one is really happy about the new Smartsheet licensing model. It's costing all of us more money and that sucks. It took some time but I eventually got past it, we went through and figured out who would need a license when this change goes into affect and who wouldn't. Well, in January we renewed and it went into affect. With that came this new "User Types and True-up" page. What they did… instead of making all non members a "viewer," they made them provisional members (I have no issue with). Then basically said you have 60 days to convert these to viewers or pay the difference in the true up. Okay cool. we know the people we need to convert so we will just add those people as a licensed user in Okta (because we have SCIM provisioning turned on) and we will be set. NOT SO FAST said Smartsheet and this new page. Smartsheet said, I know we can see your orgs current users on your page BUT for this true up portal, we don't care about that, we are going to pull a report from anyone thats ever created an account with your domain and add them to this provisional member true up page. Meaning, anyone that previously worked at our company or that no longer even had access to Smartsheet anymore, they are now on this provisional member list. If someone created an account before we ever had Smartsheet, they are now on this list. Is this the worst part? absolutely not. Okta, and the SCIM provisioning they pretty much break. We have to make a change here, go to Okta, remove them from all the groups (1 by 1 because Okta doesn't have a bulk remove), once they are removed then their account is removed from Smartsheet, THEN we can add them back in Okta and their account is rebuilt to fix what this is breaking. We went through and did all this work and got our "true up" down to about 400. Today when logging in, it undid all of that and our true up is back up to 1500 people. On this true up page you can't do more than 20 actions at a time and the actions you do, may or may not keep. This is one of the worst experiences I have ever had with a software company. Your bill more than doubles and THEN you are given a lot of work that you have to do or it will go up even more and THEN that work doesn't even work.

In short, if there was a way to just turn off this stupid true up portal and we could add the people we wanted to be made a member and the rest can be viewers it would be done in about 60 seconds via Okta.

Having read and interacted with Support regarding many issues with the new True-Up system, I can safely recommend that you look for alternatives to Smartsheet like we are after discovering what exactly this new subscription based system entails and how it's launch has been botched by Smartsheet. Support provides little to no actual information outside of PR speak, so I will inform you about what "workaround" Andree is alluding to.

For starters, an overview of the True-Up system:
Each billing cycle, your account will go through the "True-Up Process" where users with the 'Viewer' permission class will be, if they were given Comment, Edit, or Update permissions for any sheet in your Smartsheet domain (granted by ANY 'Member' permission member who owns a sheet) that 'Viewer' will be updated to a 'Provisional-Member' which, as one Smartsheet member informed me, was the 'try before you buy' subscription.

During the True-Up cycle and before the next billing cycle, Admin level users can navigate to the User Management section to mark any Provisional-Members as either full Members (giving them a paid license), or to downgrade them back to Viewer which will remove ALL create, edit, and comment permissions on ALL sheets that that user was given access to.

At the end of the billing cycle, all Provisional-Members not downgraded to Viewer will AUTOMATICALLY be upgraded to a full 'Member' license, and the cost on your bill will increase and be PRORATED based on their 'usage' whatever that truly means. If any support reps would like to challenge this intended flow or clarify you are free to.

THE WORKAROUND (AS PROVIDED BY A SMARTSHEET SUPPORT AGENT):

Now, the 'Workaround' that Andree likely alluded to is a bit of a loophole in how the True-Up system is apparently supposed to function. Essentially, when an Admin downgrades a user from a Provisional-Member to a Viewer, this removes all permissions that user had and also prevents that user from being marked as a Provisional-Member during that same Ture-Up cycle. However, that same member can be granted edit permissions again to sheets and gain a sort of 'frozen provisional-member' license that will not go through as a full Member at the end of the True-Up cycle, and instead shift over to the next cycle where that user will again be marked as a Provisional-Member eligible for automatic upgrade to Member status.

The workaround, as you quite aptly stated, is a time consuming mess of fighting the True-Up system each and every cycle, and it would look something like this:

1. Get all Managers/Team Leads who you WANT to have full Member licenses (i.e: the 8 you have currently) into a meeting with one of your Smartsheet Admins

2. The Admin downgrades all Provisional-Members to Viewer, removing all their permissions.

3. Managers then re-add ALL Viewer members back to the sheets they need access to with the appropriate permissions.

4. Repeat ad nauseum each and every billing cycle.

As one might guess, this method is time consuming, and nigh impossible if you have a larger number of sheets which I can only assume is the idea. I am also extremely concerned about the 'Prorated charges based on usage' that is mentioned in their support documents as this sounds like if you were to miss a Provisional-Member one cycle whom you have done the downgrade-upgrade shuffle with for 2 years, you might get prorated for the full 2 years of their usage instead of just the one month. When I asked this question in my support ticket, I did not receive a response.

I would be happy Andree if you were to inform me as to where I may have strayed from the intended procedure of the new smartsheet subscription service.

My advice to any and all who are members of Smartsheet at the moment: Download your sheet and owner information and begin the process of looking for alternatives. This rollout was botched beyond belief, the changes do nothing to serve Smartsheet's client base at large, and Smartsheet's reporting and transparency leaves much to be desired. As many have likely seen, even if an Admin goes through the whole True-Up list and downgrades everyone, those people will be marked as True-Up Provisional Members the next day and require the whole process be done again in the same cycle. Smartsheet agents have informed me that 'in the backend all is fine and it's a front-end glitch', but all this does is further reduce my trust in their ability to accurately report information to their users.

If you found this helpful or insightful, please feel free to mark it as such so that more people can see this comment.

Kind regards,

Andrea, thank you for responding, however what does a “pause” until June mean? Our account says it will renew in May at $960. Not the $192 we currently pay. Again we have 8 managers/creators and around 30 staff who literally update the status of tasks and comment when a row is complete etc…we also have a placeholder name that lets us track things like an outside agency plan checking our plans. We DO NOT WANT time consuming work arounds. We understand business and things change, but how about a $1.99 option for what used to be a free collaborator. That would keep people on the platform without question.