What are some best practices for automating workflows in Smartsheet to improve project management ef

jhon Antonio

I'm looking to streamline my project management process using Smartsheet automation features. I want to know how other users set up workflows to reduce manual tasks and enhance productivity. I'm interested in tips or examples of automation that have helped teams work more efficiently.

Brian_Richardson

That's a pretty general question but I'll give it a shot.

We use Smartsheet for project portfolio management, amongst many, many other things. So, here's a "day in the life" of PPM with automation in mind:

Intake: when a requestor submits a project request to our EIT department in ServiceNow, that request is read into Smartsheet through Bridge, flagged for the appropriate team to analyze, and then moved through a review process. For that review process, EIT leaders are notified. When complete, the project is setup with all templates through Control Center, which automatically links metrics and profile data through to a Summary Sheet for further analysis and reporting.

Workapp: Project Managers, Portfolio Owners, and Task Owners all use the same single Workapp URL to access information and do their day-to-day work. That Workapp is managed and automated through Control Center.

Schedule: There's a few automations in play on schedules:

• When a task has been updated in the past day/week (depending on how the PM sets it up), change highlighting applies and highlights the changed cells.
• When a task is marked Complete by the task owner, the downstream tasks flag themselves as ready to be worked and an alert goes out to the next task's owners, as well as the task showing up on task owner reporting for "Ready to Work tasks"
• Baselines are set on schedules and Smartsheet calculates variance, and rolls that variance up
• RYG status is calculated for the PM based on end date and % complete (overdue=red, coming due=yellow, in progress but not due soon=green, not started=grey, complete=blue), with overrides on status allowed
• RYG status for the parent tasks, and then for the project, are calculated as well (2 red=red overall, 2 yellow/1 red=yellow overall, all complete=complete, all not started=not started)
• If someone flags a task as complete, 100% is set in the % complete cell for them if they forget
• Program Managers are reminded to set baselines if they haven't been set yet
• When someone is assigned to a task, and it's coming due, they get an alert
• Once a week, all active task owners are asked to update in progress tasks through Update Requests (an email with a web form). The PM doesn't have to chase status. Submissions are automatically updated in the schedule.
• Predecessors make task date management easy through waterfall chains and critical path analysis
• Project metrics (like variance, dates, status) are captured through cell links setup by Control Center and posted to a Summary Sheet for reporting and further analysis

RAID: Our Risk, Action, Issue, Decision, and Change sheet has automations:

• Changes to Budget alert our Finance partners automatically
• Changes and Decisions spawn an automated approval process which sends an approval request to the sponsor to click via email. Their decision and commentary is captured back into the RAID log.
• When changes are approved to charter, that change is copied into the charter automatically into a Change section for history.
• When the project completes, the PM is reminded to enter Lessons Learned into the RAID log
• Assigned Risks/Issues staff members are asked via Update Requests weekly to update the status of their assignments. Those statuses are automatically captured into the RAID log via email without needing to open Smartsheet.
• Various dates are captured when statuses are changed

Status: We have a separate statusing sheet for PMs to use with their project

• Schedule status is read in from the Schedule sheet
• Baseline status is read in from the Schedule sheet, flagging whether a baseline has been set and whether Variance exceeds 10% or 20% (yellow and red)
• Financial status is read from the Financials sheet, again flagging variance
• Data Freshness status is read as a combination of the last update date to Schedule and RAID, if >1 week it's flagged
• Other status items are hand-set by the PM and commentary updated.
• Overall project status is calculated as a mix of all the above statuses. It can be overridden by the PM, but if they override then the sponsor must approve it via an approval automation, otherwise it doesn't take effect.
• All status information is pushed to the Summary Sheet along with other metrics for further analysis and change tracking.

Reports and Dashboarding

• Not automations per se, but each project has a set of dashboards and reports, and each portfolio has a set as well. The reports that make up the dashboard are always up to the second updated, so leaders are confident the Smartsheet dashboards represent live data
• Portfolio Level dashboards and reports use the Summary Sheet, maintained by Control Center, with cell links bringing the latest information into the sheet immediately.
• Control Center makes copies and adjusts report scopes to ensure that reports have the correct information on them.