Hi there.
I recently migrated my L&D team's work management into Smartsheet. We're using it to track the following work: training new hires, working on projects, developing eLearning courses, and developing documentation. We're only a few months in, and it's working very well, but we're seeing some undesired effects that we'd like to remedy.
My primary question is this: In your experience, is it more helpful and easy to manage different types of work in one sheet, or across multiple sheets?
- Right now, we're doing the latter. We have a sheet and a form for each of the following: new hires, projects, eLearning, documentation.
- I have created multi-sheet reports that enable us to look at all work assigned to an individual, regardless of type (training, project, etc.); all work related to a department, regardless of type; etc.
- I have created automations that make items from certain sheets (documentation, eLearning) flow into other sheets (projects), when appropriate. This is done using helper columns that assess certain criteria.
Here are some undesired effects of our current setup:
- There's not an easy way for my manager (or anyone else on my team) to create a view that provides a comprehensive look at the work for any individual or department. I've created reports for this, but if they want to modify it, they have to ask me for help. Creating or modifying a filter on a sheet would be much more manageable for them than creating or modifying a report.
- Outside of reports, we don't have a way to view the totality of our work in a central location. (See challenges with reports in the above bullets.)
- Since everyone on my team is engaged in at least 2 of our 4 types of work, everyone is working within at least 2 different workflows (some as many as 4). Some of our different types of work are different enough to warrant different workflows, but more standardization would be good. (And not having near-duplicate automations on different sheets would be good.)
- The integrations between our various work-tracking systems are complex enough that there would be a pretty steep learning curve if anyone other than me wanted to make a significant change.
I'm particularly interested in your suggestions of potential undesired effects of having all work management in a single sheet. Below is one that I can foresee:
- The catch-all sheet becomes excessively large and requires much left-right scrolling, since different work types require different data.
