Sights Dashboard Feedback from Power User

Crystal C

Hi there, not sure where to put in my feedback for Sights but I think it's a great tool but has the potential to really be so much more powerful for business users.  I feel like I get stopped at ideas due to lack of features.  Here are some ideas I hope you can add:

 

- Export to PDF: we use the dashboard as sort of a reporting capability and instead of having users added to smartsheet I'd love to export and send it via email instead of doing screengrabs.  

 

- Embed HTML:  Having the ability to add HTML and bring in reports / charts / dashbaords / live feeds into the Sights would be amazing.  I use the tool for reporting that connects to Smartsheet but to show it on the dashboard requires me to just do a screen grab which requires updates and maintenance and is not live.  I also have a scenario where we use an uptime tool to track site uptime and that would be a very cool features to plug into the Sights dashboard.

 

- Smartsheet Basic Reports Integration : there's no way to integrate your smartsheet charts into Sights w/o screen grab.  I know they are in Labs, but I'd highly consider adding this feature.

 

- Formatting:  Moving the boxes around causes a mess sometimes, it pushes things all over haphazardly.  Seems too sensitive.

 

- Jira Integration :  Would love a better integration of the Jira tool with Sights to have it feed Sights w/o having it to go to a Sheet, Create a Report and then pull the report in the Sights.

 

Thanks!

Crystal

Daniel Stein

Thanks Crystal for your thoughtful feedback on Sights! Your requests align nicely with several of the features on our roadmap for Sights, and here are some of the details.

 

- Print: We're working on browser print for Sights, which Chrome, Safari, and Edge will support. Using any of those browsers, you will be able to choose the "PDF print" option to generate a PDF. We're currently targeting September or October for this feature.

 

- Publish: Similar to sheet publish today, we'll soon release publish for Sights. This will allow you to generate a live link to a Sight that anyone can view without logging in (or, you can optionally restrict viewership to members of your Smartsheet organization). It will also allow you to embed the Sight via HTML. We're currently targeting September for this feature. I realize you are asking about embedding live charts in a Sight (not embedding a Sight somewhere else), and this is further out -- see "charts" below.

 

- Widget positioning and resizing: with our most recent release, we increased the flexibility of widget sizing and placement, but as an unintented side effect the repositioning logic is now too sensitive. We are aware of this issue and are working to fix this as soon as we can.

 

- Charts: this is something we're working on, though we don't yet have an ETA to share. In the meantime, customers, make their Sights more visual in a number of ways, as it sounds like you are already aware. These including adding an image widget (that can link to charts that live elsewhere), or showing cell symbols (or images in cells) via the Metric widget or Report widget.

 

- Jira + Sights integration: we've taken your feedback and will consider this for future enhancements.

 

Thanks again for your feedback, and feel free to continue sharing enhancement requests with us.

 

Best regards,

Daniel

 

Product Manager, Sights

Crystal C

I really appreciate the thoughful response!  

B. Edelstein

Agree with all the points listed. The formatting took a bit of a step backwards with the latest release. While the control is a bit finer on resizing the boxes, the behavior to move boxes down, but not up, forces a lot of additional rework when reducing the size of boxes which are higher on the worksheet. Additionally, the controls for resizing the content within a widget still leaves much to be desired. Lastly, we really need the ability to edit widget links, rather than just having to recreate. 

 

Thanks,

Ben

Daniel Stein

Thanks Ben for your feedback. We are shipping an improved version of the widget layout feel in the next day or so that will be less "sensitive" while moving and resizing widgets, so feel free to let us know what you think once you have tried it out. We have noted your other feedback as well and will consider it for future releases.

 

You mentioned you are not satisfied with the controls for resizing content within a widget. Could you please let us know more specifics about this?

 

Best regards,

Daniel

B. Edelstein

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the prompt response. I see the team has already adjusted the sensitivity, which is helpful. The issue still remains where, if I move something on the dashboard such that items shift down, creating a blank space, I have to move each widget up individually. This gets to be pretty tedious when resizing items.

 

Regards,

Ben 

Daniel Stein

Hi Ben,

 

Thanks for your feedback, and I'm glad to hear the tuned layout sensitivity is working better for you. To provide some context, we had disabled the "automatically move widgets upward" behavior to allow customers to place the widgets where they like, leave space if desired (for grouping of content), and align with typical behavior of dashboarding tools. That said, I definitely understand there are cases where the auto-move-up logic is desirable, and we may indeed want to add a toggle for users.

 

Once you've spent some more time using the tool, I'd love to hear any updates about how it's going, whether you continue to prefer the "auto-move-up" behavior, and anything else you observe.

 

Best regards,

 

Daniel

 

Product Manager, Sights

B. Edelstein

Sure - As I mentioned to you earlier, being able to group select widgets would make laying out the dashboard much easier.

 

Thanks,

Ben