I need help with our messaging strategy for a team 20 plus people. Slack? Google Chat?

Jef Forward

I just watched a great webinar called "Make remote work more productive with smartsheet" Very informative. I was happy that we are already doing a lot of these strategies. However, I was hoping to find a little more insight on how and why we might, or should be using messaging apps.

We currently use gsuite. We do not incorporate slack or google chat into smartsheet. We do use gmail, and this is the predominant tool for internal communication, alerts and notifications. I know that a messaging app will improve our collaboration, and I want to move in that direction. I am currently comparing Slack vs Google Chat. I have 2 questions;

First, Can you share with me any distinct advantage one has over the other with regard to a smartsheet integration?

Second, can we use the @mention feature in smartsheet and have it push to a notification in a messaging app?

Thanks, Jef

Genevieve P.

Hi Jef,

I don't have a recommendation as to what may be best suited for your company, but for your second question, there currently isn't a way for the @mention to send to a specific person in a chat like this. @mentions in comments will send to a user's email and alert them within Smartsheet's notification center (see here for more information).

The way that you can configure notifications to channels is through Automated Workflows. Now, one of those workflows could be triggered when a comment is added to a row, but it wouldn't be able to read the @mention from within that comment to know who to send the alert to.

Here are some articles with more details:

• Chat Integration Options
• Integration with Google
• Alerts in Hangouts Chat
• Alerts in Slack Channels
• More information on Smartsheet & Slack

Hope this helps!

Genevieve

Jef Forward

Thank you Geneveive, yes this is helpful, thank you! Jef

Genevieve P.

Hi Jef,

I don't have a recommendation as to what may be best suited for your company, but for your second question, there currently isn't a way for the @mention to send to a specific person in a chat like this. @mentions in comments will send to a user's email and alert them within Smartsheet's notification center (see here for more information).

The way that you can configure notifications to channels is through Automated Workflows. Now, one of those workflows could be triggered when a comment is added to a row, but it wouldn't be able to read the @mention from within that comment to know who to send the alert to.

Here are some articles with more details:

• Chat Integration Options
• Integration with Google
• Alerts in Hangouts Chat
• Alerts in Slack Channels
• More information on Smartsheet & Slack

Hope this helps!

Genevieve

Jef Forward

Thank you Geneveive, yes this is helpful, thank you! Jef

Jef Forward

Genevieve,

I have a clarifying question. I cannot have an alert automatically send to google chat. I jhave gone through the set up. I have enabled google chat in the admin console, and I have the SS bot added to google chat. Can you help with this? It would be so helpful if smartsheet could communicate with google chat! Thanks Jef

Genevieve P.

Hi @Jef Forward

When you say you "cannot" have an alert send to google chat, do you mean you receive an error message? Or is there a specific step you're stuck on? (Screen captures would be really helpful, but please block out any sensitive data!)

You may find Sean's first post on this other Community thread helpful (here). Please also double check that in your Personal Notification preferences within Smartsheet you have the checkboxes checked below "Messaging Apps".

Cheers,

Genevieve

Jef Forward

Hi Genevieve, thanks for the reply and the shared information. When I say "cannot", I meant that chat was not presented as an option, similar to Slack or Teams. Considering this is a totally different set up, would smartsheet consider posting an article with specific instructions on how to get this to work. This is surprisingly difficult, and I am a glass is half full type of guy! I will continue to test....Thanks Jef

Genevieve P.

Hi @Jef Forward

Thank you for clarifying; I've passed your feedback along to our Help Center team so they know that the instructions weren't clear from our documentation.

You are correct - the Google chat bot requires an email address as the person to send the alert to since it's a direct message, which is a different process from selecting a Slack Channel directly from the workflow.

If you're continuing to have issues, you may want to contact Smartsheet Support directly so they can work with you on this one-on-one.

Cheers,

Genevieve

Genevieve P.

Hi @Jef Forward

Just a quick note to let you know that the Help Center article has been updated to explain that for Hangouts chat you will select the Contact in the Action Block instead of searching for Hangouts directly in the workflow. See here: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2476771-take-action-alerts-hangouts-chat

Thank you for your help identifying where our articles could provide more clarity!

Genevieve