Trying to understand smartsheet - data integrations

donaldgoodwin

I am a freelance data scientist, and have been given temporary access to smartsheet to evaluate it's capability, and possible opportunities for integrations to support data-heavy work. My standard analytical tools are R and python, both of which have advanced data-processing, analytical, modelling, and visualisation / dashboarding capabilities. Smartsheet appears to be a well-used tool, and I am investigating whether integrations between smartsheet an these mainstream data science tools might be popular, and what the current "state of the art" is.

I know there are PBI / Tablaeu add-ons. There is also a "live data connector" addon that uses odbc to connect systems BUT, the examples seem to focus on data flowing from smartsheet to somewhere else (eg. excel), not data incoming from a master data source.

Is smartsheet designed to interface with a database that stores master data, or is the assumption that smartsheet itself is the master dataset?

Thanks!

MichaelTCA

Hello @donaldgoodwin

I've researched how Smartsheet uses the ODBC to connect systems and it is a read only version. You can't write with it.

If you wanted to write to a separate location through an ODBC, you would need to use a 3rd party app.

Depending on what software you want to write to, Smartsheet's Bridge could "backdoor" the process. The ERP that I use is not compatible with Smartsheet's Bridge software either.

The capabilities to use Smartsheet's Live Data Connector is limited and I only recommend using it to reference data.

Based on my research into the product and how much I've used it, I believe Smartsheet intends on the master dataset being contained within Smartsheet or through Smartsheet add-ons and approved/certified third parties.

Keep in mind, Smartsheet is cloud based.