Managing a team without adding emails?

Kenneth W.

I'm trying out Smartsheet as a potential tool to manage employee resources. My team has two main, simultaneous quarterly projects plus ankle biters here and there. Basically I want to have Gantt chart functionality to manage the projects, but a team resource view to make sure that no one is overtasked as they hop back and forth between the two.

It looks like Smartsheet can do this, BUT: there's a catch.

I work in a government agency with archaic IT rules. Can't download any software or plugins, we have Office 2016, and no project management software is installed on our computers. So, Smartsheets as a web portal seems to be a good solution.

However, our requirements also mean that I can't add peoples' email addresses to my sheets, because I can't have them getting emails from a commercial site. Is there any way to create and manage a team of straw man team members--without email addresses--so that I (and only I) as the manager can see Abby is doing task A while Bob is assigned to task B?

Can Smartsheets do this? I'm struggling to find any web-based project/team management software anymore that doesn't have the built-in (and forced) email and coordination with team members that is forbidden by my IT department.

Sameer Karkhanis

Unfortunately, I don't think you can use resource view unless the user assigned is a Smartsheet user. I don't get what the purpose of the contact list is but that was the only possibility but doesn't work.