The new Smartsheet experience

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[Deleted User]

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/289807#Comment_289807

Hi @Susan B Peck and @Ashley Ryder - I wanted to ensure you saw our recent blog post from our VP of User Experience, Doon Malekzadeh, outlining the reasons behind the changes, the role of customer feedback, and also what's next. Please note that these changes are just the beginning and we will continue to iterate and update based on what we are hearing from our customers. Please do continue to share any other feedback with @Brendan Reed so we can continue to pass it along to our UX and Product teams.

Susan Peck

@Stephanie Boulanger - I've read the blog post and, although you seem to have done your homework, the overwhelming response to this thread has been negative and not one of the "overjoyed" users has come out to defend the changes.

The biggest issues are that the new UX is clunky, space wasteful, and overly childish in design. Today I see there is a new feature in the menu bar which has no value to our use but is now taking real estate.

We are hoping that future changes allow for customization of the toolbars and menus, just like most software packages allow. That flexibility would go along way toward making the changes really useful to all your customers.

Thanks for listening.

Susan

Ashley Ryder

@Stephanie Boulanger @Susan B Peck I tend to agree with Susans remarks and have also read the Blog and reiterate what we have all said via this platform - We are not against change but not at the expense of usability. Why dont you offer the original Classic view which gives the option for those that value visual working space over unwanted gimmicks to carry on fairly happily as before. If your changes are as popular as you seem to think they are then the majority of users will continue with the new UX!

BHeight

This new layout makes things take longer than they ever used to. This new sidebar takes up much more space. The column width issue other talk about is horrible. What really gets me, is when navigating around, the workspace and folder browser doesn't remember where you were at. So each time I have to navigate back to the folder I was in because it takes me either to the top level of the workspace or just into whatever random workspace it thinks I want to be in.

I'm convinced that the people designing this stuff dont actually spend any time in it doing real work. If they did they would have left the layout and design the way it was in 2018 when it actually worked better.

If we were shopping around today to fill the need smartsheet does for us, I'm not sure we would end up choosing smartsheet.

James Keuning

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/288255#Comment_288255

I am a pretty new Smartsheet user. We've been using it for less than a year, and there are only a handful of us at this point. And I am always evaluating whether we will roll things out to a bigger group.

This thread is very discouraging. My company has a little over 1000 employees, and I have internal users who I need to consider leading into Smartsheet. My colleagues have external customers. If this upgrade happened in my organization, my internal clients would be EXTREMELY upset that now they have to explain to their customers why things look different, how to change their view to see what they used to see, etc. I know this because we use other products that have done this to us. And we have products that have never done something like this.

I think that your enhancement request process is unnecessarily opaque. Why do you hide the current enhancement requests? Why not let all Smartsheet users see what has been requested and just add a vote or a comment? As it is, these requests go into a black hole. I mean, even myself personally I forget if I submitted a request for a thing or not. Filling out that form takes time. You force a lot of your customers to spend a lot of time doing a thing that you could really help us out with.

I am on the edge of making a decision to recommend Smartsheet or another product to my organization. The update and the response sets Smartsheet back significantly. I almost did not contribute to this conversation, because I do not think it matters, and I am doing this on Saturday morning, but I have benefitted from the community here, in terms of making my work easier and my ideas successful, so I want to support my fellow users and let them know that I agree with them. I do not expect Smartsheet to change, and I will only be convinced when I see that you open up your enhancement request system so that users can see submitted requests and either add our vote or add comments. Until then, you are a black box, and I have no confidence in improvement, and this situation here actually gives me confidence that you will go backwards.

Ashley Ryder

@Mark Mader @Anna Griffin @David Pessis @Brendan Reed @Stephanie Boulanger

New User Interface that your customers do not like!

I am becoming rather tired by the lack of answers from the SS team - yes we have had the expected " corporate" responses from Brendan & others, but It feels like there is a management culture going on here along the lines of - we were bound to get some kickback we will make the right noises and then they will run out of steam and move on! - please tell me I have got that assumption wrong SS!

We have now had this awful new look in the UI/UX for several weeks, there has been a considerable number of contributors who have very clearly said they dont like it and yet apart from a micro change which nobody can see the difference in nothing has happened to address the issues we have raised.

Just so we are clear -

We would like a return to the previous amount of viewable workspace we had before this change

We want the column header space restored to its previous size

We would like the menus and icons returned to previous positions/size

We would like a clear straight answer as in is this is going to happen and if so when?

If you have no intention of providing what you customers are asking for thats fine and your prerogative, but be honest and tell us so we can individually make decisions about if we stay or find an alternative.

Yechiel Binet

Dear SmartSheet Team,

I am not sure why its so complicate to listen to your customers & return to the previous layout? there are over 80 comments, almost 3K views in this thread and all we are asking is give us back the old view, once you guys will figure out how to improve all the above issues you will display the new view so far NOONE here is happy of it and it seems that Smartsheet doesn't really care about it, I don't see any real reply from the Smartsheet team if they plan to fix it or not, now its even not pined anymore to the top of the community sheet that shows that the Smartsheet team is just hoping we will all forget about the issues since we all work and get busy with other stuff.

I hope that someone in the SmartSheet team could reply to us with a real plan about all the above issues and if there is no plan to fix it Please be honest and let us know. additionally please pin this thread back to the top so its not being lost between all the other conversations.

Looking forward for an honest respond.

[Deleted User]

Thank you again for your suggestions, comments, and concerns. We continue to share this feedback with our product team. We also continue to private message individuals to ensure we are capturing all feedback and addressing individual concerns.

Please know that we are working to find the best way to connect you with our executive team, more to come on that soon. We appreciate your continued patience but do know that we are hearing you and sharing all the feedback that has continued to come in over the past couple weeks.

For those who have not yet done so, I do encourage you to review the article written by Doon Malekzadeh, our VP of user experience, that further explains why these changes were made and what's next.

Please expect to hear more from us in the coming days.

Thanks!

Ashley Ryder

@Yechiel Binet @Stephanie Boulanger @Mark Mader @Brendan Reed

Sadly the unpinning of this thread tells us all we need to know and zero response from the CEO tells us even more!. Response from Stephanie is sadly more of the same "we are in listening mode still but wont give definitive answers"

Maybe a Google search for European Super League failure would help focus the minds of the powers that be at SmartSheet! as to what happens when an organisation gets it so wrong but struggles to come to terms with the same!

Sameer Karkhanis

I believe Smartsheet team has heard this loud and clear, and so lets give them some time to address it. Yes, we are not happy with few things UI/UX wise, but let us also keep in mind that the functionality is not broken to get that mad. Lets be mindful of everyone -- users and product team.

[Deleted User]

Hello Community! Later today many of you will be receiving an email invite for a customer feedback session in which we will be connecting you directly with our Product Senior Leadership Team. We don't take for granted the time you have spent sharing your feedback within our Community and we hope that you will be willing to give us just a little more time so that we can answer all questions and hear all concerns regarding the new Smartsheet experience.

If you do not receive an invite by end of day and would like to join us, please reach out to me directly at stephanie.boulanger@smartsheet.com.

[Deleted User]

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/290614#Comment_290614

@Ashley Ryder Please expect to see an invite via email to a feedback session with our Product Senior Leadership Team. I really do appreciate your patience while we worked to get this kicked off. We look forward to connecting with you!

Madyson Morris

Hi Smartsheet Community,

Last month, we introduced the new Smartsheet experience. One of the things we heard from you is that you want more screen space when working in sheets. We listened to this feedback and are enhancing our full screen view (currently the little box with arrows in the bottom left of a sheet). We'd love some volunteers to sign up to get early access to the enhancement, test it, and and provide feedback before we move forward with releasing to all customers. The enhancement would be enabled 1-2 weeks from now. If you'd like early access, sign up here! https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/f6e84789f21346b9bf6844648c90305e

Thank you for your continued feedback as we iterate and make Smartsheet better!

[Deleted User]

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/291840#Comment_291840

@Nathan Betters @Ashley Ryder @Susan B Peck @Jason Koscinski @SK @LanceAlbanese @Sean Stran Wanted to make sure you all saw this opportunity for additional feedback. :)