Feature Request: Timeline within Smartsheet

Dori Young

One feature that MS Project had that I've had a hard time working around is a timeline feature that is part of the application.  I understand that SS integrates with Office Timeline, but I have to pay for this, manually manipulate this, and I have to recreate a timeline each time deliverables change on my plans.  We have a portfolio of 10-12 in-flight projects so that becomes quite a task for our PMs each week.

 

Other Requests:

These might already be on the Roadmap but though I'd list them since I'm thinking about them:

 

The ability to change the gray background on Card View and Sights to white

We use Sights and snapshots of Card View and Sights as Status Reports that often get exported to PDF.  It would be less obvious we are using screen shot of the background could be changed.

 

Lookups Between Sheets:

I know you get a lot of requests for this, but just in case.  Unless and until the dashboard widgets become available, it's hard to calculate statistics from sheets such as Issues easily; especially for programs.  I have a couple of programs with several in-fllight implementations and it would be really nice to find a way to easily report issue statistics across initiatives. 

 

The Ability to Chart Data (Really):

The Charts integration isn't useful or practical.  I need the ability to chart my sheet data and present visual representation to clients and our team.  We use Smartsheet to track the following:

 

• Implementation Plans
  Project FinancialsProject Issues (Conversion)DecisionsIssues & Risks (Project Level)Go-live Check ListsChange RequestsOther

 

We have ~430 sheets and nearly 20 sites.  We've integrated Smartsheet into our daily project and porfolio management.

 

 

Chris Winfield

I'll second all of these requests!

Chris Winfield

Hi Dory,

 

If you'd be interested, I wonder whether we could compare and contrast approaches to project/portfolio management in Smartsheet. We have about 300 project live at the moment, and I use a variety of approaches to summarise portfolios/programmes (none of which are perfect!)

 

Let me know if interested: chriswinfield@nhs.net

 

Chris

Shaine Greenwood

Hi Dory,

 

Thanks for the feedback. I'll pass this information on to our Product team for further review.

 

We're looking into the best ways of allowing formulas to reference information from other sheets, as that feature is highly in demand.

 

As for charting, you might check out our ODBC driver that allows you to push data from Smartsheet to applications such as Tableau for reporting/charting: https://www.smartsheet.com/apps/smartsheet-odbc

Jim Hansen

More perspective on the timeline view...

 

I'm using Smartsheets to depict our high level project portfolio.  It would be great to display it as more of a traditional road map than a Gantt.  Roadmunk is a good example of what we're looking at but I'd rather not spend the extra money and I'd like to limit the tools.  Smartsheets is heading in the right direction (e.g., Card view) but, a simple roadmap view would be great. (e.g., 1 row per initiative, with segments representing major taks and 0 duration sub-tasks represented as milestones on the roadmap.)

Shaine Greenwood

Hello Jim—Thanks for the input and reference to Roadmunk. I'll pass your feedback along to our Product team for further consideration.