How to know who has sign up for Trial account in my company?

Vivien Chong

As a System Admin, how can I know who are the trial users in my company?

Genevieve P.

Hi @Vivien Chong

If users in your company are signing up for Smartsheet trials with an email address that is not associated with your Smartsheet plan, then there isn't a way for you to see or manage this account. This would be the same as if they signed up for a Smartsheet trial with their personal email.

As a System Admin, you can only manage emails/users who are part of your plan (as free or licensed members). You may want to look into User Auto Provisioning which will automatically add email addresses with your company's domain as members of your plan. See: User Auto Provisioning

Cheers,

Genevieve

Genevieve P.

Hi @Vivien Chong

The members of your company's plan will either be Licensed or Unlicensed. If a user was previously on a Trial, but then you added them to your company's plan as an unlicensed member, when they accept the invitation the account turns into a Free User account as a member of your plan.

This means that no one you manage as a System Admin under User Management is on a Trial account. Is that what you were asking about?

Cheers,

Genevieve

Vivien Chong

@Genevieve P. Thanks for answering.

My question is: I am the System Admin for Smartsheet and management our Smartsheet account. As any staff will have the ability to sign up for trial account, how would I know who has sign up for trial so that I can better manage and control, as well as to understand the usage needs in our company?

Genevieve P.

Hi @Vivien Chong

If users in your company are signing up for Smartsheet trials with an email address that is not associated with your Smartsheet plan, then there isn't a way for you to see or manage this account. This would be the same as if they signed up for a Smartsheet trial with their personal email.

As a System Admin, you can only manage emails/users who are part of your plan (as free or licensed members). You may want to look into User Auto Provisioning which will automatically add email addresses with your company's domain as members of your plan. See: User Auto Provisioning

Cheers,

Genevieve

Vivien Chong

Thanks @Genevieve P. - So the answer is the System Admin won't be able to know who has sign up for Trial account in their company, unless it's an Enterprise account, then they can do "Auto Provisioning" and the staff will be assigned a paid license instead.

Genevieve P.

No problem!

Just to clarify, with Auto Provisioning you can auto-assign an Unlicensed account as well, it doesn't have to be a paid license.

Stu Benoff

In my opinion, the auto-provisioning feature needs to capture additional criteria before the account is created. I believe we only get their email address. We don't get their name or department or anything else related to who they are and forget about charge-back information. I can't understand how large organizations could use this feature as-is.

Scott Peters

@Genevieve P. - Is there any update to the administration of free trials? Right now with auto-provisioning turned on, we are experiencing the following:

1. It only captures their email address, not their first or last name
2. Admins are not aware of the new users; they have to proactively check the unlicensed users list (weekly)
3. If a user signs up for a free trial to be a licensed user, there is no alert or report an Admin can use to be aware of this
4. When a free trial expires, a user is then 'expecting' we will grant them a license, which is not in line with our strategy
5. We do redirect them to a custom dashboard with our policy and an engagement form, but at that point it is a bit late to be setting their expectations

Genevieve P.

Hey @Scott Peters

There has been an update since this post was created, yes! You can see if a member in your company has started a free Trial while being a part of your plan by exporting the User List in the Admin Center. You should see two columns in this report, when you're looking at the user list weekly:

1. On Trial (True for unlicensed users on trial)
2. Trial End Date (Date) - only displayed for unlicensed users on trial

Since you have Auto Provisioning enabled, I assume you're on an Enterprise plan. In this case, I would recommend creating a custom upgrade screen to help set the expectations when your new members are requesting a license. You can direct them to that Dashboard and engagement form at step 3 instead of step 5.

Here's more information:

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/1392225-customizing-a-welcome-message-upgrade-screen-enterprise-only#toc-create-a-custom-upgrade-screen

Cheers,

Genevieve

Stu Benoff

I don't understand, "You can see if a member in your company has started a free Trial while being a part of your plan." I think this means that a user, already under my plan as a non-licensed user, starts a trial directly with Smartsheet for a full license - right? You're saying in this case I can see that?

Our normal scenario is that someone starts a trial BEFORE they ask to join our plan and only come to us when their trial is ending and they want to continue using Smartsheet so they join our plan. In this scenario, can the admin see that that trial is active? I'm guessing we can't.

Thanks.

Genevieve P.

Hi @Stu Benoff

Yes, exactly - this year there was an update that enabled unlicensed users that are part of a plan to test out full license capabilities for 30 days to make a case for whether or not they actually need a license.

Here's the release note: Unlocking Unlicensed Users

Here's the Help Article that explains it in more detail from the user perspective:

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2482759-access-trial

You are again correct that the only users you can see a report on are the ones that are associated with your plan. If your employees are starting a trial before they're members, then they won't be included in that report.

Cheers,

Genevieve