Real time & ressource management

Benoit Gonneville Damme

Smartsheet is a great product with great features, but it lack in crucial features for any real event and logistic planning. 

 

Add time/duration management for task

When selecting a start and end date for a task, we should be able to select a time for it as well.

 

We cannot be limited to fixed hours work day or using "gaps" to manage a logisticaly complex project. One day your crew will start it's day at 4am, the next at 8am. One staff member will be assign to a task from 4h00-5h30am and will start it's next task at 5h35am to 16h55.

 

This kind of planning, with the ability to "zoom" to hourly view in Gantt View, is crucial to any project manager when it comes to managing the production timeframe of projects.

 

Add real ressource management

Why limit ressource management to only Smartsheet users? Ressource management is about managing more than just your smartsheet users, it's about managing rental trucks, sound systems, setup and tear down staff, etc.

 

Again, the feature is there, but it is currently limited to viewing ressource allocation from smartsheet users, thus limitating the possibilities of the current ressource management tool.

 

Put your energy on core features

I have been following the developement of Smartsheet for some years now and I am a little bit disappointed to see that it seems like more efforts are put into superficial features like ISight and Card View than critical features like real time and ressource management.

 

Smartsheet is great for managing a project in pre-production, with long term tasks and goals. But why stop there? With most of the core features already available, why prevent project manager from been able to stay inside Smartsheet to do the rest when time comes to go into production. Mutiple companies and event planners I know are choosing to ignore smartsheet because they cannot adequatly manage task times and track ressources.

 

Please, focus on your core features, you're almost there...

B.

Kennedy Stomps

Hi Benoit-- Thanks for this feedback. I know that there is some discussion about potential improvements to Resource Management going on internally right now. Are there other features that you would like to see in Resource Management in Smartsheet, other than just being able to assign tasks to non-user resources? 

 

Just a note in case you aren't aware--there is a workaround for this at this point, which is to create "dummy users" in your account. You can add non-licensed users with fake email addresses to represent non-human or non-Smartsheet user resources. These users can then be tracked in Resource Management.

 

Real-time task duration is something that is on our enhancement request list and I will add your vote for it, however I do not have a development timeline for this at the moment.

 

Looking forward, we are currently working on some significant changes to core Smartsheet features, including Notifications, Filters, Search, and the Mobile experience. I am very excited about the releases we have planned through the end of the year and look forward to sharing more information on these features with the Community as it is available.

Benoit Gonneville Damme

Hello Kennedy

 

Thank you for taking time to reply to my comment.

 

Regarding the Ressource Management workaround - yes I am aware of this workaround and have been using it as such. It works, but I definitly consider it as workaround and not a permanent or intuitive solution. It feel weird to be assigning a fake email to a 40' cube truck ;-)

 

I'm sure it's already in your to do list, but multiple assignment task is also a priority for Smartsheet to be considered complet. No task requires only one person. And while I know you can write a series of names inside a cell with commas, they are not recognized by the system for Ressource view or even inside Report.

 

--

 

While I'm gratefull that you are developing features for phones because they make field work much easier, please understand how much we feel like you are not concentrating your effort on the most important features...

 

I have been following smartsheet for many years now and it still feels like an unfinish tool because it lacks core features that your users expect, rightly so. And some of the most request features like time of day, multiple people per task, Vlookup, dropdown list multiselect, cell merge, etc. date back from early 2015.

 

It is hard for us to have faith in a company that put its effort on a faeture like Card View before a feature like multiple dropdown list and multiple people per task.

 

Thank you for listenning.

 

B.