New Interface & Charts Improvements

To free up space for upcoming features, and make navigation easier, we’ve moved the toolbar from the left to a “ribbon” toolbar at the top and moved the bottom tabs to a right panel and menu bar (above the toolbar).

Check out this blog for more info on the changes: The New Smartsheet Design

You also have more options to select data to chart against. Both are great options for using discontiguous data in a chart:

Chart from a report
After selecting your range, choose specific columns to chart with the Select Column button (while editing the chart widget)

Check out the Charts help article for more information.

NOTE: Smartsheet dashboards and the charts functionality are available to Business and Enterprise users only.

Explore the new interface and new features today! You can also see a complete list of updates on our Release Notes page.

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Comments

J. Craig Williams

"I hate change" - Just about everyone.

Second impression on the new interface: I have less cells in view than I had on Sunday. In my office, I have two monitors attached to my laptop for a reason - more real estate. On the two monitors, this is barely noticeable, but on the laptop it is noticeable enough that I shudder to think about using the laptop on the road. I'm sure I'll get used to it. I'm also afraid of building up the muscle in my right pointer finger with all the extra scrolling I will be doing.

I'll mess with screen display settings to see if that helps, but I had them set to the way I like them.

Craig

Chris McKay

I'll go one step further than Craig and categorically state that I'm not a fan of this change. I've become so used to the Smartsheet layout and now I'm having to learn the location of everything over again. Oh and it hasn't added anything to the experience as a sweetener either. I too seem to have less real estate (note: this is bad) and dread having to use it on the road.

I cannot fathom what "insights" Smartsheet used to decide a change was necessary. I cannot see any comments on this forum and I've certainly never had anyone in my organisation (hundreds of Smartsheet users) complain about the previous UI.

The presentations explained that the screen is being optimised for future features, but that's cold comfort until these are implemented.

Chuck Muirhead

Not a fan of the new layout and especially the tiny icons now over on the right hand side....definitely out of place. Lots of empty space next to the File, Alerts and Forms menu for them.

I do like the changes to the charts, although I had to discover on my that you have to manually change existing charts to baseline to zero...no instructions included. Not sure if this was an oversight, but you have to click on the select the switch rows/columns a couple times OR the select columns and just click DONE and your charts baseline is zero. New charts baseline correctly.

Not sure what internal management changes you have made at Smartsheets over the past couple years, but it is less focused on customer needs.

Brad Jones

I'm just going to scream the next time a product update announces "we've gathered user feedback and..."

When we see that 9 of the top-10 user forum requests have gone unresolved for >=2 years - then we all have to ask what alternate pool of users you are getting your feedback from?

RANK CREATED TITLE STATUS

1 Apr-15 Task multiple assign open

2 Sep-15 Vlookup Solved (thank you)

3 Jun-15 Freeze Rows open

4 Apr-15 Dropdown Multi-select open

5 Feb-15 Column property time open

6 Jul-15 Merge cells open

7 Mar-16 Calculate time diff. open

8 Jun-15 Rows removed open (PLEASE PLEASE)

9 Mar-15 Project Baselines open

10 Jun-15 Resource Leveling open

Current Smartsheet product design guiding formula (best observational estimate):

IF cosmetic

THEN prioritize

IF functional

THEN change

IF broken

THEN ignore

IF user_input

THEN ignore_politely

Chuck Muirhead

Let me add...having a comment option on webforms that actually populates the comments rather than having to create an additional column for comments. This was submitted by me and affirmed by many others users....

Since row update requests allow for comments to be directly added to the comment section, this seems as though it would have been an easy addition, when originally requested 1.5-2 years ago.

J. Craig Williams

I don't like that the Filter count is now a mouse-hover away. My mouse-mileage is on the rise again.

Craig

Stephen Smith

Too soon to tell, but I definitely notice that more space is available for additional columns. It seems like there is more space on the screen for the sheet not less. The icons are pretty small on the right. I don't get the point about extra scrolling as the sheet stays put when I go to the toolbar. However, the File, actions alert bar seems to be unnecessary. There is plenty of space on the right side of the icon toolbar to put that navigation, Just separate with a double vertical line ll to separate from the icon menu, why waste a whole line when there is plenty of space on the icon bar?

Brad Jones

Filter Count, Comments Count, Notification Count, Sharing Count, UR Count, Login ID, etc. Many useful items were hidden away in the last few updates.

It'd be cool if it was actually making the system faster, but alas...

Stephen Smith

I understand some previous features are gone. That is typically called a downgrade, not an upgrade.

Marc Hauge

Can we say "New Coke"??? Advice, focus on feature enhancements, not interfaces that didn't need fixing. Not a good change. Would be nice if we had an option to have the original layout. Took me about 5 minutes to find out where the forms went.

One of the first times I have ever been disappointed in a smartsheet "upgrade".

Chris McKay

I'd slightly disagree. I'd like the focus to be on:

Bug fixes such as:

System dates - seriously, a PPM that cannot calculate system dates outside UTC time is fundamentally flawed and this has been outstanding for > 2 years.
Cell-link hard limits - 25,000 cell-links and 100 cross-sheet references have the potential to severely limit enterprise customers.
Blank auto-rows - Blank rows are randomly added when new rows are initiated from Zapier, Smartsheet Control Center etc. that break formulas and cause mayhem
Inconsistent/inaccurate searches - No need to explain this as everyone knows that FIND does not always find and the built-in search becomes unusable if you have more than 20-30 sheets.

Better documentation and support for enterprise solutions:

My organisation is paying a substantial fee to access SmartSheet Control Center and Enterprise licenses. I wrote a scathing email to senior members of the Product Team last year about the haphazard way SCC functions, the fact that there was still a Beta logo displayed (it definitely behaved like it was in Beta) and the complete lack of documentation. What was the response? A single page overview of SCC (severely lacking detail) and the removal of the Beta logo. There was a promise of more documentation to come, but that was 6 months ago and I'm tired of asking. Ordinary customer service to say the least.

Feature enhancements:

Prioritise the stuff that's been hanging around for ages and has the most attention. Multiple resources, merged cells, freeze rows, project baselines, per cell formatting and images in forms.... I'm looking at you!
The pipeline should be driven by real customer requirements gathered here and at Smartsheet events and via feedback provided to the Customer Success Team, not the whims of the Product Team.
A development roadmap must be published to allow those putting their reputations on the line by championing Smartsheet to plan solutions properly.

Marc Hauge

Spot on with the bug fixes... Some of those are inexcusable.

Kara Lumley

Hi there -

I wanted to address some of the concerns on this thread.

Task multiple assign - this is in the works for release in the second half of the year.

Dropdown Multi-select - on our roadmap

Column property time - on our roadmap

Project Baselines - on our roadmap

Calculate time diff. - we do have a formula that we can enable that will calculate time - this is useful for timesheets, (clocking in and out, with a break in between, for example). If you would like that enabled, please let me know.

Rows removed (assuming you are referring to editors having the ability to delete rows) - this is being discussed currently. We must ensure that adding more granular permission options will still be user-friendly. As you can imagine, there could be an entire matrix of permissions, and we are doing the research to make sure we get this right for users.

Freeze Rows - we've asked user groups why they want the ability to freeze rows, and the overwhelming majority want to be able to see some sort of column instructions. Instead of freezing rows, we plan to add editable tooltips to column headers.

Merge cell (see below)

Resource Leveling - we will likely never be a purpose built resource management solution, but we do integrate nicely with solutions who do resource management and resource leveling VERY well - happy to give you those company names if interested.

Roadmap - there are several reasons we no longer publish a roadmap - a detailed explanation listed here - this also addresses cell-merging and a few other features that have been requested. If you have a Customer Success Manager assigned to your account, they will be able to provide more granular details on what is coming up.

With regards to cell link limits, we recently added telemetry that will help us assess scalability of raising the limits. If we do not see risks, we will likely raise the limits for all customers.

The blank-auto rows will also be addressed.

Chris, I did speak with the SCC team about the lack of documentation and it should be up and available within the next 6 weeks.

Chuck, we have big plans for the right-hand side, so it may seem a bit odd for the time being.

Craig - hovering to see the numbers in filters irks me too

Smartsheet is not a flat file format like Excel, so some items (like per cell formatting) are not as easy as one may imagine, unfortunately. I hope that this provides some transparency and explanation. Please feel free to reach out to your Customer Success Manager, or send me a direct email (kara.lumley@smartsheet.com) if you would like to discuss anything further.

We are happy to help and appreciate the feedback.

Thanks everyone,

Kara

Marc Hauge

The blank-auto rows will also be addressed. -

Could this be fortified by forcing a cell to carry down the formula without having to have two rows above with the formula?. The autofill formula feature can be troublesome if there is a break or the dreaded blank-auto row occurs. I would like to not have to have primer rows to start formulas.

The other problem I have is getting accurate results when doing calculation on a system dates. I know there are work arounds, but that is cumbersome and shouldn't be necessary.

Kara Lumley

Hi Marc,

Yes, that is part of the solution we are developing, to have a "column" formula.

Thank you!

Kara

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