With Control Center, is the Global Update feature also able update automated workflows?

CamSME

I used automated workflows... a lot. We're looking to purchase Control Center, but it is not clear to me if I will be able to update my automated workflows across multiple sheets in the event I have a common change or update to make.

Matt Johnson

Hi @CamSME

Unfortunately updating automated workflows is not a feature in Global Updates. If you can get around that though, Control Center can be really great.

I hope that helps.

Matt

Matt Johnson

Hi @CamSME

Long response alert, sorry.

Below are my top 4 features for Smartsheet Control Center (SCC). The "automatic updating of portfolio quantities" is probably the most important feature. Not only does it add new projects into the mix, it can be built in a way where new metrics can be pulled from existing projects. It's difficult to anticipate today what you might need tomorrow so the ability to update profile data on previously created projects is pretty cool.

As for the Automated Workflows and Conditional Formatting, we usually try to make those work with the sheet data as much as possible; using contact columns instead of direct notifications, etc. Maybe consider the value being 80% of the automations are built into the template and are the same across the Portfolio and only 20% are customized on each project. Maybe that could work. Or, if you have to do 40-60 custom automations that are unique to each sheet, then you'll have to do that with or without SCC, so maybe focus on the other benefits.

• Summary Rollups - You can roll up all the projects' metric sheets into a Portfolio Metric Sheet and then report on things like number of behind tasks per project/program/state/PM, etc. Without the Summary Rollup feature you'd have to manually tie the counts from the Project metric sheet to Porfolio Metric Sheet which could be time consuming and there could be a risk for manual errors. You can also create different summary roll ups from different sheets within the Template, it doesn't have to be all the sheets filtered down.
• Global Updates - Regardless of the time saved in doing manual updates vs Global Updates, its the piece of mind knowing that the system did the update so it was the exact same and complete on every project. Missing 1 project in the manual update process might not move the needle at the Portfolio level so it could go unnoticed and unaccounted for. GU eliminates that.
• Dynamic Scope Reporting - This feature is kind of like the last sentence in the Summary Rollups section. You create a report outside of SCC, then within SCC, you set up that report to pull from a certain sheet or sheets within the Template. This is important for a few reasons but one being speed and stability of reports once you are looking at a workspace of 1000's of sheets. For example, if your template has (5) sheets: schedule, budget, risk log, RFI tracker, and Contact List; and you have 500 projects then your standard Budget Report is looking at 2500 sheets in that workspace. With Dynamic Scope Reporting you set the report to look at only the budget sheet in each project so it's only pulling from 500 sheets instead.
• Automated Project Creation - In terms of straight project creating, if you are doing X number of new projects a week/month, the manual sheet renaming alone can get time consuming depending on how many objects (sheets/reports/dashboards) you have in your template. SCC allows you to set up a criteria that will allow for automatic project creation without going into SCC at all.

I hope that helps.

Matt

Matt Johnson

Hi @CamSME

Unfortunately updating automated workflows is not a feature in Global Updates. If you can get around that though, Control Center can be really great.

I hope that helps.

Matt

CamSME

@Matt Johnson thank you for the feedback. With all of the customization I perform, I've had high hopes that Control Center would really reduce manual updates across many sheets... but the further I get into the details I'm questioning the value when considering the price tag. The global updates won't update my automated workflows (I've got anywhere from 40 to 60 per sheet), nor will it update all my conditional formatting.

From what I can tell, it really only offers the same capabilities as "save as new" for a basic template rollout, global updates for basic column updates, and automatic updating of portfolio quantities.

Could you provide any insight into the areas where it has provided strong value for your projects?

Matt Johnson

Hi @CamSME

Long response alert, sorry.

Below are my top 4 features for Smartsheet Control Center (SCC). The "automatic updating of portfolio quantities" is probably the most important feature. Not only does it add new projects into the mix, it can be built in a way where new metrics can be pulled from existing projects. It's difficult to anticipate today what you might need tomorrow so the ability to update profile data on previously created projects is pretty cool.

As for the Automated Workflows and Conditional Formatting, we usually try to make those work with the sheet data as much as possible; using contact columns instead of direct notifications, etc. Maybe consider the value being 80% of the automations are built into the template and are the same across the Portfolio and only 20% are customized on each project. Maybe that could work. Or, if you have to do 40-60 custom automations that are unique to each sheet, then you'll have to do that with or without SCC, so maybe focus on the other benefits.

• Summary Rollups - You can roll up all the projects' metric sheets into a Portfolio Metric Sheet and then report on things like number of behind tasks per project/program/state/PM, etc. Without the Summary Rollup feature you'd have to manually tie the counts from the Project metric sheet to Porfolio Metric Sheet which could be time consuming and there could be a risk for manual errors. You can also create different summary roll ups from different sheets within the Template, it doesn't have to be all the sheets filtered down.
• Global Updates - Regardless of the time saved in doing manual updates vs Global Updates, its the piece of mind knowing that the system did the update so it was the exact same and complete on every project. Missing 1 project in the manual update process might not move the needle at the Portfolio level so it could go unnoticed and unaccounted for. GU eliminates that.
• Dynamic Scope Reporting - This feature is kind of like the last sentence in the Summary Rollups section. You create a report outside of SCC, then within SCC, you set up that report to pull from a certain sheet or sheets within the Template. This is important for a few reasons but one being speed and stability of reports once you are looking at a workspace of 1000's of sheets. For example, if your template has (5) sheets: schedule, budget, risk log, RFI tracker, and Contact List; and you have 500 projects then your standard Budget Report is looking at 2500 sheets in that workspace. With Dynamic Scope Reporting you set the report to look at only the budget sheet in each project so it's only pulling from 500 sheets instead.
• Automated Project Creation - In terms of straight project creating, if you are doing X number of new projects a week/month, the manual sheet renaming alone can get time consuming depending on how many objects (sheets/reports/dashboards) you have in your template. SCC allows you to set up a criteria that will allow for automatic project creation without going into SCC at all.

I hope that helps.

Matt

SSFeatures

Smartsheet still doesn't have a way to update automation workflows using the API.

I created a browser extension ( https://ssfeatures.com ) that lets you copy and paste automation workflows between sheets. This can help in the meantime until Smartsheet provides us a way to bulk edit automation workflows.

To copy and paste automation workflows with SSFeatures:

1. Click the Copy button.
2. Open a different sheet.
3. Click the Create from Scratch button.
4. Click the Paste button.

Then SSFeatures will paste the automation workflow into this sheet.

I hope this helps in the meantime!

Lindsay Whitbread

Nathan at @SSFeatures is setting himself up for a Nobel prize.