What is the best approach for using discussions?

Wouter Pinxten

We are the function a discussions quite heavily. However I wonder what is the best approach to organize discussions.

When do you start a discussion?

How do share a discussion?

When do you stop a discussion?

Finally, can you archive a discussion?

Kr,

Wouter

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Comments

Alla T.

Hi Wouter,

I am a UX designer at Smartsheet, currently working on the discussions feature. Would you be interested in setting up a phonecall to discuss your questions and provide feedback on our upcoming updates to discussions?

You can reach me at

alla.taborisskaya@smartsheet.com

Thank you,

-Alla.

Mike Lottridge

I like the discussions feature, but one issue is that when people post a question ( versus some general comment ) to a discussion, it tends to get "lost".

One thing Box does is let you add a username to a discussion, and that person gets pinged with an email. I think that would be very useful.

Also, it would be very helpful to enable the user to flag a discussion that needs a response so it's visible on the sheet, maybe changing the discussion icon to an icon with a "?" or something similar, so I could filter a sheet and find these discussions easily.

J. Craig Williams

Related to Mike's comment, I'd like discussion changes and attachment changes to show up at things that will change the modified by and modified date sytstem columns.

Craig

Mumprenuer

Discussions are the ban of my life...

We use them extensively to do most of our internal commuciation and I still haven't foun the right way to use these.

We went from not using the new discussions at all, just each person adding their comments (that became a nightmare)

Now we add new discussions to break things up along with editing the Titles to show when a particular discussion is COMPLETE.

Because of the issues around this I'm now thinking to move all discussion into a link into an evernote. However, I'm sure that will probably bring different issues again.

Would love more ideas around how to manage discussions...

Ruby Whitaker

This is a little off base from the original post, but involves discussion functionality. I didn't find a thread on this topic elsewhere and as a UX Designer is following the thread, I thought I would share and see if this is an issue for anyone else.

We've noticed that when a fie is attached within discussions, although you are able to access the file from the attachment column, the Actions are limited compared to files added as independent attachments. For example, Upload New Version is not available.

You must either add a new discussion or delete discussion to change attachment.

I know this is a minor annoyance, but we have run into the issue more than once.

-Ruby

elijin

Seeing that a discussion UX designer is following this thread, i've emailed her the following requests! I really like the discussion feature, but find it very out of date on smartsheet.

1. Allow @mentions:

Kind of like Facebook, alot of other project management tools allows for users to @mention other users. I hope this gets implemented soon.

2. Flags for new discussions:

When I access my smartsheet, I want to know what discussions are new. Please have a way to flag out new discussions.

3. Close Discussion:

Discussions are somewhat like forums. Allow admin and owners to close discussion threads once its done.

4. Discussion Settings:

Allow for admin or owners to not allow deleting of comments. I share my sheets with customers and we do signoffs, acceptance all on the sheet. We cannot allow them to delete comments.

I hope the above requests can improve smartsheet! I really love the discussion feature and hope it can be improved greatly!

Si Spence

It would be great to have an update from SS on 'Discussions' functionality please.

Si Spence

It would be great to have an update from SS on 'Discussions' functionality please.