New USM Alternative
I think I'm not alone when I say that the new USM roll-out has been nothing short of a nightmare. aside from the technical issues plaguing the Admin side of things, which I know you are working on, the model itself is simply ridiculous. It is difficult to manage and takes control over who gets a license and who doesn't away from the business. It also creates a lot of unnecessary work to manage the provisional members. For a platform that exists to help create efficiencies, it is ironic you went with such an inefficient and badly designed user subscription model.
As you work toward addressing the issues that many of us are experiencing, I would like to suggest an alternative. Namely, that you divide users into three categories. Creators, Editors and Viewers. The Creators are the current "members." Editors are the former free collaborators, but no longer free. Viewer would continue to be the only "free" option. The Editor level would have a lower price point than the Creators. The "creating a membership by sharing" would go away entirely, and any billable change to a membership would have to be granted by a System Administrator.
I believe this would be a better compromise between your needs and the needs of the customer.
Comments
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Yes. I love that idea. Editor permissions with the basic functionalities to just edit what was needed was a plus. Now it's all or nothing. Which is scary when we have linked cell columns to formulas/sheets or uniformed PM tools created and now they can be edited if not all the cells are locked (which we need users to edit, so we cannot lock them.) There is no in between anymore and this has been a hassel as we have 120+ projects that I have had to individual go into 5-10 templates for each Control Center provisioned project to edit so that things downstream are not messed up. I am 1 admin so imagine how much work this has placed on myself along with now having to babysit the admin center. What is the point of the permission levels on workspaces when if they are set as editors they are change right over to members. When a user is changed from a member to viewer they are then removed from their groups in group management because that group was set in a workspace as editor. This is much more work than I wanted and now have to police my emails and teams messages to when someone needs access to something based on an assignment in their email and they cannot see it due to being removed from a group since we have limited members and they DO NOT NEED full access. They just need to get in and get out to work their assignments on a project plan!
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I agree with Kelly Ospina's suggestion of three licensing levels of Smartsheet access. I used to love using Smartsheet as a work tool. Now I hate it. It isn't user friendly and there are a lot of channels to go through to get work done because of being made a provisional member. I used Smartsheet a lot and enjoyed creating and tracking forms and registrations for events I planned. I could create forms and email the links to our prospective attendees. Then I could log in and see who registered quickly. Now I have to ask a paid member to create the form and report back to me where we stand. Its time consuming and ineffective. I would love to be able to create and edit again but you have made it cost ineffective. Please consider this change for our company. We have been long time customers.
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For those who have upvoted or commented, PLEASE share this with others and ask them to do the same. The squeaky wheel gets the oil and I know we're not alone in our loathing of this new user model. Also, I am sure I'm also not alone in feeling very concerned that my company is going to lose patience and pull the plug on Smartsheet entirely. I've been using the software since 2015 and have advocated for it ever since. It's fantastic software, but is it good enough to overcome the negative implications of this poorly designed user model? That's debatable.
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Agree, the new USM sharing permission based is not sustainable, there are hardly control over access right and budget.
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I would suggest that there be an activity based option, where if the user exceeds a number of edits only then will they be charged anything for collaboration as a Member. We literally have some users who edit 1 to 3 times in a single month, it is not justifiable to charge them a license. This USM creates additional overhead for the solution, I'm concerned that although the intention was to make Smartsheet more money, in the long run this will hurt them as a organizations scrutinize how their users are actually using it, thereby reducing the number of needed licenses.
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I have been with Smartsheet since 2013 and I have loved the product, but it is over. Sorry, but this license model is just a money grab. Likely, our organization will be phasing out. Our organization is over 125,000 employees.
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There needs to be an option for just editors with maybe a smaller rate per user. Not ideal but would be a meet in the middle kind of option. The free collaboration is what we thrived on and the reason we went with Smartsheet. Now we have things locked down as much as possible and hoping that the new members that were able to do just what they needed are not doing more than we have trained them on.
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I agree with the others on here⦠I have built so many things based on the "Comment" permission level. We have numerous field employees who only need to comment on existing items and that's their only permission level⦠on maybe one or two sheets. Many of them may never even use it⦠this is very occasional. They don't create or edit anything.
With the new subscription model, a commenter will now be considered an "editor" and because their email is part of our domain, we are limited even further. With this new model, we will have to pay $348/user annually for them to have the ability to comment on something? That is absurd.
It's almost like this new subscription model is intended to encourage existing Smartsheet customers to look for alternative SaaS providers. I've been an avid user and supporter of Smartsheet since 2013 and it's clear this is a decision of the new owners⦠corporate greed at it's finest. There is no way the people who made this decision have any interaction with customers. I feel for those employees who do⦠I cannot imagine having to try and sell this as a positive.
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Our renewal is coming up and will soon be under the new USM model. We are also heavy smartsheet users and may be in search of a new platform. So far, all I have is what admins will do, they have provided nothing to alert our current licensed users who share sheets to editors/commenters on what it will look like on their end. So basically, it sounds like our licensed users will have no visibility or alerts when they share sheets which is a bit crazy. If I remove a provisional user, then what? Does anyone have any tips on how you trained your teams to re-think how they work in Smartsheets from an end-user. It's quite the change that we have to roll out in less than 60 days. Any tips?
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Agree with what has been said. We have been having very dissatisfying meetings with our reps for weeks. We accepted that we would have to pay for editors, but we want control over who can create and share assets.
We renewed under protest because it was too late to convert to another platform. I found, via ChatGPT that there was supposed to be a setting to control who could create assets, and there was even a link to documentation. That gave me a little hope. I asked our reps to confirm this and they went silent. No response.
Well, guess what? Our conversion was yesterday, and the setting is not there, and the link no longer works. I believe they have done this so the customer can't control licensing sprawl. It's a complete disaster. The new leadership seems to be steering the ship directly toward the iceberg with no intention of avoiding it.
Like others, they have successfully converted me from a big fan to a complete hater. Even before the conversion, we were discouraging new use and looking at ways to convert to other platforms. Now that effort will be full steam ahead.
