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Smart Sheet for a Print Shop?

I own a medium sized print shop and I am exploring software solutions to accommodate my client and job database, job tickets with product specification, production management, work flow etc.

I currently have a database of around 80 000 completed job tickets that we use for reference. Just about every job is different. We produce products ranging form simple business cards and annual reports, to signage and vehicle wrapping and everything in between. We print on anything...except running water. Will the software allow me to capture such a diverse range of specs.

I get the impression from watching the available videos that a sheet is more aimed at a single project and the tasks associated with it?

I do not see any videos or comments regarding my industry type and know too little about Smartsheet to decide whether I should spend more time digging into the capabilities of the software to determine if it will work for me or not.

Any advice form the expert users out there would be appeciated!

Chris

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Comments

Tony Coleman

Hi Chris, my view.

The tool is very flexible. Try not to consider as just a project tool. I'm not sure about the Smartsheet marketing departments view, but at the heart of it - this is a spreadsheet. What it lacks in complexity between Excel and MS Project, it more than makes up for in it's flexibility to adopt to a number of different use cases.

It really does come down to requirements though, but I'd be particularly aware of the row limits (see thread) in your case. For a fully functioning system Smartsheet can make use of other applications via API calls - or using products like Zapier for pre-built API jobs.

You might benefit from talking with J.Craig Williams for a quick consultation. Him, Mike Wilday and Brad Jones are quite prominent in the community and may have seen the kind of complexity you need to be working through.

Good luck

Hamada100#

Thanks for your input Tony - will contact them

Chris

Mike Wilday

Hi Chris,

Based on the thread that Tony has shared, you will have to Split your data if you want to consider implementation. I would say that your implementation is not impossible, but you would have to take serious thought into how you implement it. Seeing as you have a massive collection of past job information, you could split the information any number of ways, by date, by job, etc.

Smartsheets has a great reporting tool that can aggregate and filter data from any number of sheets within smartsheet that could help with gathering information from your split data into a single report. For instance, you could create a report for business cards, and pull from a job-type column in all your sheets to see only business cards, you could then add a filter for a particular client, or paper-type, etc.

If you have any specific questions please don't hesitate to ask and we all will share our experiences with you.

More on reports: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/522214-creating-reports

Alejandro Lamothe

Hello

May be what you need is a combination of tools Smartsheet for the different tables and Appsheet to integrate them

How do you have your records organized?

how many tables?

OAP

It is a good system we have used it for a few years - it is at heart for project management but has a broad range of applications you can bend it to.

I would be very careful though if you intend to use formulas as it is severaly limited in its ability to process formula driven sheets.

We had a sheet made for us by the Smartsheet team and with only a dozen or so columns and less than 1000 rows it ground to an unusable halt.

Apparently 'due to the use of formulas being too much for the Web Browser'

- we rebuilt it in Google sheets and it works perfectly so i dont think a browser issue at all it seems to be a Smartsheet issue.

Mike Wilday

I am curious as to what kind of formulas you are using that are slowing down the halt of the system? We have a similar setup and were using formulas thoroughly. We did not have the same experience using Google Chrome browser.

Richard Rymill SBP

Chris

My colleague Craig Williams is really busy right now, so if you would like to arrange a conference call with me I can help you decide if you can get what you need from Smartsheet. If we can identify the common denominators that feature in all your work, then add exceptions as individual job detail that would make sense, or whether you would benefit from Appsheet which will add considerable functionality to Smartsheet by linking it with a Google sheet which can create a Conditional Logic to your work, so getting the effect of a Relational Database but maintaining the Visibility and collaboration benefits of Smartsheet.

Email me with a suggested time & day, we offer a Free Consultation to all Smartsheet Community members.

Hope I can help

RichardR@smarterbusinessprocesses.com