Sights - Not enough functionality setup is weak

Michael Wrinch

I have gone through sights. You are on the road to making a good 'dashboard' tool, but clearly not there yet for the application i need.  

I would suggest adding more widgets and better display of data and various infographics. For example, if i am going to drop a table of "per cent complete" for the project on various tasks, that should be straight forward, it is not as the tasks are not associated and i have to add another table. 

If i was to show per forma graphic as to progress vs planned on time and cost and resources (ie pie, line, bar graph) then i need a graphic that will allow that. There is none. 

From the looks of it I think smartsheets is still stuck in the same construct of tables and trying to re-adapt the smartsheet core engine. You may need to depart from that with more widgets or something.

When you get there and want to give a demo in a few months you are free to contact me but for now i will keep exporting to excel.

 

 

Shaine Greenwood

At this time, Sights still need to pull direct values from underlining sheets (or reports that pull data from sheets), and we don't have a charts widget as of yet. 

 

Can you provide more information on what you do with the data in excel after exporting? Do you have examples of applications or features in excel that accomplish what you need?

 

I can send this to our Product team for further review.

Michael Wrinch

hierarchy of the information is important. Right now its hard to show and select what i want to show. 

 

A graph of percent complete would be good instead of having those little widgets. 

 

what i would like to see is a complex reporting advancement that has the same hierarchy as the project.

A report that has a list of dozens of flat tasks makes no sense at all. Take for example the following basic hierarchy:

Electric Car Prototype10% 

Design40%

            Make schematic drawing  90%

            Create Bill of Materials       80%

Construction

Create Layout drawing    76%

            Order parts  0%

            Build Panel 1 0%

            Build panel 2 0%

           

If I run a report on what tasks are above 75% complete, I should see:

Electric Car Prototype 

Design 

            Make schematic drawing  90%

            Create Bill of Materials       80%

            Task 0%

            Task 0%

            Task 0%

Construction

Create Layout drawing    76%

 

And NOT just

Make schematic drawing  90%

Create Bill of Materials       80%

Create Layout drawing    76%

And if I run a report to find tasks less than 25%, I should not see:

 

Electric Car Prototype 10%

 

Because its not a task. But I should be able to select if it shows or not.

Similarly, if I want to run a report on the status of a high level deliverable like Panel 1 and 2 like this:

 

Panel 1 50%

            Task 1.1

            Task 1.2

            Task 1.3

Panel 2 30%

            Task 2.1

            Task 2.2

            Task 3.3

 

I should be able to issue a report on

Panel 1: 50%

Panel 2: 30%

Right now, that is a hard thing to do easily and a wigit to graph those deliverables would be interesting and great. Tables of numbers is only so good. 

Shaine Greenwood

Thanks for the example as it pertains to your use case. A few of the major callouts that I can see that you're wanting are:

-Display hierarchy in reports

-Use hierarchy as report criteria (e.g. "show only parent rows that have 75% complete or above")

-Calculations in Sights (as opposed to having to calculate data in source sheets)

-Charts/infographics in Sights based off of these calculations (e.g. instead of seeing 75% complete, display a pie chart showing % complete)

 

Thanks again, I've passed this feedback along to our Product team for further review.

Steve Levy

I would echo this request.  Sights seems to be a good path for High Level reporting (BOD meetings etc).  Graphics are critical to be able to visualize performance of a KPI.