New USM Alternative

Kelly Ospina · 02/27/25

I think I'm not alone when I say that the new USM roll-out has been nothing short of a nightmare. aside from the technical issues plaguing the Admin side of things, which I know you are working on, the model itself is simply ridiculous. It is difficult to manage and takes control over who gets a license and who doesn't away from the business. It also creates a lot of unnecessary work to manage the provisional members. For a platform that exists to help create efficiencies, it is ironic you went with such an inefficient and badly designed user subscription model.

As you work toward addressing the issues that many of us are experiencing, I would like to suggest an alternative. Namely, that you divide users into three categories. Creators, Editors and Viewers. The Creators are the current "members." Editors are the former free collaborators, but no longer free. Viewer would continue to be the only "free" option. The Editor level would have a lower price point than the Creators. The "creating a membership by sharing" would go away entirely, and any billable change to a membership would have to be granted by a System Administrator.

I believe this would be a better compromise between your needs and the needs of the customer.

AngB789 · 03/03/25

Yes. I love that idea. Editor permissions with the basic functionalities to just edit what was needed was a plus. Now it's all or nothing. Which is scary when we have linked cell columns to formulas/sheets or uniformed PM tools created and now they can be edited if not all the cells are locked (which we need users to edit, so we cannot lock them.) There is no in between anymore and this has been a hassel as we have 120+ projects that I have had to individual go into 5-10 templates for each Control Center provisioned project to edit so that things downstream are not messed up. I am 1 admin so imagine how much work this has placed on myself along with now having to babysit the admin center. What is the point of the permission levels on workspaces when if they are set as editors they are change right over to members. When a user is changed from a member to viewer they are then removed from their groups in group management because that group was set in a workspace as editor. This is much more work than I wanted and now have to police my emails and teams messages to when someone needs access to something based on an assignment in their email and they cannot see it due to being removed from a group since we have limited members and they DO NOT NEED full access. They just need to get in and get out to work their assignments on a project plan!

laurieking65 · 03/03/25

I agree with Kelly Ospina's suggestion of three licensing levels of Smartsheet access. I used to love using Smartsheet as a work tool. Now I hate it. It isn't user friendly and there are a lot of channels to go through to get work done because of being made a provisional member. I used Smartsheet a lot and enjoyed creating and tracking forms and registrations for events I planned. I could create forms and email the links to our prospective attendees. Then I could log in and see who registered quickly. Now I have to ask a paid member to create the form and report back to me where we stand. Its time consuming and ineffective. I would love to be able to create and edit again but you have made it cost ineffective. Please consider this change for our company. We have been long time customers.

Kelly Ospina · 03/04/25

For those who have upvoted or commented, PLEASE share this with others and ask them to do the same. The squeaky wheel gets the oil and I know we're not alone in our loathing of this new user model. Also, I am sure I'm also not alone in feeling very concerned that my company is going to lose patience and pull the plug on Smartsheet entirely. I've been using the software since 2015 and have advocated for it ever since. It's fantastic software, but is it good enough to overcome the negative implications of this poorly designed user model? That's debatable.

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New USM Alternative

Idea Submitted · Last Updated 02/27/25

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