Disable License Trial

michelle.matthews

I would like the ability to disable the license trial. We restrict who can create sheets and make sure users are trained before they are granted a license.

Randall Casper

I agree with this request. We have a process where if the employee hits the green Update button it will open a form for them to fill out that goes to our admin team. We vet the request for a license (most of the time this was an unintentional request) and then grant a license if necessary. The new Trial License feature Smartsheet introduced is causing a lot of confusion in our organization as they are getting e-mails from the sales reps that ask them to contact them directly to discuss changes to the enterprise account. They also get an e-mail that tells them their free trial is ending and gives them options to upgrade. The ability to give out trial licenses should be done by the Admin. team instead of it being an automated process coming from Smartsheet, or the Admin. team should have the ability to disable this feature.

Fwilliams

We need this ability. From a Smartsheet perspective, this is a great way to promote the expansion of the tool within an organization. However, like michelle.matthews points out, it bypasses our internal licensing approval process and creates difficult conversations with people who start the trial and expect us to pay for an additional license when it's over.

Joe St.Onge

This needs to be turned off ASAP!!! This feature is completely against our quality control and license vetting process! We have a process where if the employee hits the Update button it will open a license request form for them to fill out that goes to our admin team. We vet the request for a license (most of the time this was an unintentional request) and then grant a license if necessary. The new Trial License feature Smartsheet introduced is causing a LOT of confusion in our organization as users are getting e-mails from the sales reps that ask them to contact them directly to discuss changes to the enterprise account. They also get an e-mail that tells them their free trial is ending and gives them options to upgrade. The ability to give out trial licenses should be done by the Admin. team instead of it being an automated process coming from Smartsheet, or the Admin team should have the ability to disable this feature. Using the enterprise plan auto-provisioned users should not have the ability to start a free-trial. Likewise, enterprise plan users must not be able to purchase their own licenses to bypass governance.

jmhoward

This has caused a lot of issues at my company. As others have noted, the full access bypasses controls we've intentionally set up. Furthermore, as with the others, it's causing a ton of confusion. I keep getting asked why new users are on a trial when they are supposed to be on our account. We also purposely have one point of contact between my company and the Smartsheet sales team, but now everyone is getting contacted to reach out to the sales rep individually. It's difficult to maintain my company's strategy when people are having all sorts of separate conversations with the sales rep.

Ralph Marsh

As already noted by comments above, this is a VERY undesirable change for us. Smartsheet has unilaterally undercut our governance model. Now every one of our 2000+ users can start a free trial, then request - and expect to be assigned - a permanent license after 30 days.

In fact, our CEO inadvertently initiated a free trial, received the "hey, your trial is ending" email, and reached out directly to our account rep (as the email instructs) asking how to proceed. All of that occurred with no awareness provided to the System Admin.

We have put in a lot of work to build adoption of Smartsheet across our organization based on the usage model of assigning relatively few licenses to “power users” and enabling them to be the “citizen developers” for their teams. I understand why Smartsheet would make this change, because it will definitely drive more users to request licenses. But for people in our organization, most are perfectly well served as non-licensed users who are assigned “Editor” or “Admin” share access to sheets created by a smaller group of licensed users.

I strongly request that Smartsheet add some functionality where the System Admin can override this new functionality.

MCorbin

Agree with all - at very minimum, this should be controlled by the Administrator - let US choose whether or not a license trial is granted.

Rick Olsen

It confuses folks in our org that they need a license and causes undue consternation. I understand you wanting to promote yourself, but not everyone needs a license and we should be able to control how we present it to our own folks.

Frank Falco

I completely agree with all these comments.

This is unacceptable and there needs to be a facility to turn this auto-license and the Green button off at the discretion of the Admin.

Getting a message that your "Trial Ends in 15 days" has caused an unacceptable level of confusion and support for SS users.

Please turn them off or give us a way to do it.

Chris Weber

Our organization also controls who receives a license and there is a two step approval process for granting licensed access. I am also concerned by the fact that they are able to create sheets and that if they do not obtain a license these sheets will be deleted after 30days. I hope they are being advised of this and I am assuming there is no way to reactive the sheets after they have been deleted? This is very disturbing to me that this access is being given and there is no way for us to disable it.

JoeKinne

In response to the "On Radar"

On Radar · Last Updated 04/11/23

Insight from our Chief Product Officer, Praerit Garg: in offering free trials to unlicensed users, we are helping users start to solve their urgent business challenges right away, helping you maintain your compliance and security posture, and helping users make the case for securing their own full license. These free trials are compliant with the governance and control policies of your domain. This is consistent with how any user that may sign up directly on Smartsheet website to try Smartsheet. There is no financial commitment, and you retain the decision to approve or decline all license requests.

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While Smartsheet may feel that it is helping users to solve their urgent business needs, what is more often happening is users are spending time and money attempting to create a new process or thing that is either no not needed or already exists, then we are the support team that creates the Sheets/processes/Standards or whatever now have to deal with the consequences of getting that user out of the mindset that they need to always create/change a process or we end up creating a riff between support and the user because we deny a license that they should never have been enticed to ask for.

David Tart

The comments above are all on point for our organization as well.

In a time when staffing issues are a constant frustration, you are adding an unnecessary administrative burden for your organizational customers that has no benefit for us, and only debatable benefit for Smartsheet.

As we are explaining this Smartsheet business practice to our affected unlicensed users, it creates a negative impression for all of us of what is otherwise an excellent product.

annielowry89

Please just remove the license request/"trial" version to make our lives as Sys Admin easier.

Mike Ferringer

This "Trial" option is making a complete mess of our ability to manage the user base. We already struggle with people wanting a license only to find that when issued, they never create any content. This only makes it worse. This needs to be changed. The so called "solving urgent business challenges right away" is simply an attempt to deflect the underlying Smartsheet plan to pump up license sales. At a very minimum, Enterprise users should be able to control this trial period offering. They clearly know their business needs and processes better than Smartsheet and need to be able to manage it as they see fit.

anthony.b

The free trial blocks our ability to add a user in Okta because they HAVE to come through as a licensed user. This adds multiple steps and often a couple days to them being able to use Smartsheet after their license expires. They also then lose all of the work they did with during their trial.

Steve_Mitchell

I agree completely with all the above posts and disagree with the Smartsheet insight. We are a small company and invested in SmartSheet as our new Project Management tool as Microsoft has been failing there. We desire only our PM to have a licensed copy and all project team members to be very simple free task editors how SmartSheet was marketed. It's not just the free trial that is an issue, the entire new 'free editor' onboarding process could be greatly improved. Suggestions:

1. Just like many of the above posts, the whole free trial thing just invites more questions and frustration. 99.99% of the time a new free editor is just going to be a project team task editor. Allowing them to create content during a free trial is just going to cause problems especially if they create stuff they will then lose. A waste of time for the user and the admin. And if the user is contacted by SmartSheet it will be even worse.
2. Allow business plan admins to import bulk list of users (free editors) that will create the necessary core SmartSheet accounts without free trial or anything else.
3. Bypass all the 'What is your primary occupation', etc. questions
4. Allow a newly bulk added free editor to simply log in with Microsoft account and get to work editing shared content.

While some things may be more controllable with Enterprise plan, SMB's need some of this account creation/integration as well. Would be nice to either implement in business plan or make available as a simple add on where full enterprise functionality is not needed.