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🪄 If you could snap your fingers to make onboarding your team easier..

Hi and happy new year!

Do you onboard/train new Smartsheet users at your organization? If so, I’m reaching out as I could use your expertise as we enter the new year. I'd initially posed this to Mobilizers, and am expanding to this broader community to add your perspective.

I’m curious about your experience:

How do you usually onboard new people? (e.g. 1:1 walkthroughs, setting up a getting started dashboard, or just throwing them in the deep end?)
What is the single biggest struggle you face when trying to get someone new ramped up and confident in Smartsheet?
If you could snap your fingers and have Smartsheet instantly do one thing to make your internal onboarding/training easier, what would it be?

Your take is invaluable and may directly influence how we improve the new user experience!

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Comments

Monique Odom Stearn

Sadly, my company is definitely more of a throw in the deep end tactic. It's up to each individual team to train, and even then the training is more about processes specific to that team and not general Smartsheet training. Ideally, our company's Admin team would create an onboarding dashboard with links to trainings and key information and hold recurring trainings or office hours.

The biggest struggle that I've seen is competing priorities. We don't consistently use Smartsheet across our organization (again, sadly), so getting people to understand WHY they should use Smartsheet and how it can be beneficial to them is the most important hurdle. From there, it's usually cake.

The third question is an amazing one, and one I honestly don't know that I have an answer for. Maybe something in Mobilizers for live demos. Specifically, there are a TON of templates available, but to have a template or set of automations or something already created and half filled out that you could bring to a live training. We have a lot of solutions already, but it's difficult to bring things with live data to trainings. Would love to hear other folk's ideas on this one!

Isis Taylor

I'll second everything @Monique Odom Stearn said. My manager and I are currently trying to develop an onboarding checklist by leveraging a couple of the standard templates available. For training I would like to see an automatic training tracker for at least the Core module with a dashboard that the manager could also view to track the new employees progress to completion.

Erin Horiuchi Green

Hello @Madison M ,

I designed an Onboarding solution in Smartsheet, but, I am not able to share it. We do not leverage Resource Management at this time due to insufficient feature and functionality. Submitted and upvoted feature requests for now.

Below are the references when introducing and developing Smartsheet Users.
Smartsheet Training
1) Beginner Pathway
2) Intermediate Pathway
3) Advanced Pathway
4) Project Management Pathway
5) Walk thru Live Solutions for inspiration

Assets
1) New Hire/Transfer/Promotion Request Form
2) 2/3/6-month Onboarding Template w/ Sheet Summary Statistics and Cohort Identification
3) Onboarding Template includes the above Training and then business application assignments.
4) Managers customize Employee Onboarding Template as needed
5) Dashboard per Sr Leadership Request
6) Reports to support Dashboard design
7) Employe Engagement Survey ⇒ Identify what is working, stagnating, and where to elevate.
8) Mentor Feedback Survey ⇒ Detail Employee's onboarding journey.

Stefan

Absolutely love Erin's concept!

To make monitoring of training progress easier for internal use, I sometimes wish there would be a way to automatically reflect training badges and maybe community badges.
Would be my "snap with fingers".

Greetings and happy new year!
Stefan

Madison M

Thanks for sharing, Monique! This is super insightful.

Madison M

Taking notes. Thank you, Isis!

Madison M

Thank you for this, Erin! So much goodness here.

Darla Brown

We begin the onboarding process in each new hire's orientation. We walk them through a basic overview of Smartsheet, starting with an internal portal used primarily for "where do I find ….". This is followed by a one-hour session using the Onboarding Videos available in SmartU and on Smartsheet's YouTube channel.

We then assign a training checklist for them to complete over the first year of employment. The licensed user checklist is in the template catalog. I created the unlicensed user checklist utilizing free training located in the help center.

Bligh

Some Context: Most of my onboarding is not teaching others to create sheets, but to use created sheets.

How do you usually onboard new people? Most users in our company only interact with Data intake Forms. If a user is in a role where they need to maintain or update the sheet, I normally have created a guide around the process, and talk them through in person on how to use the sheet.
What is the single biggest struggle? Wording is crucial to get right. What might make sense to you, might mean something different to someone else. Don't be afraid to adjust wording and use in the first few works of implementing a new project. Once a project is established (1-3 months), be very careful to make big changes as will need to retrain all who use it.
If you could snap your fingers? On hover details for each column or even cell I could add extra help into. More places to put guides directly in Smartsheet rather than outside of it. In sheet training would be much easier to role out to users.

Again, this is from the perspective of someone who creates sheets, and onboarding is for users, not others creating in Smartsheet, but hope it helps.

Emile Ramsingh

I try to have them first understand creating forms since they would have experience filling it out and then explaining the dashboard due to its similarities to web design. The biggest struggle is the differences in formulas from what they are used to in excel, however Smartsheet click and link to sheets make it a lot easier, if there was a way to create quizzes it would improve engagement and ease of transition.

Madison M

So helpful hearing how you approach onboarding, Darla. Thank you!!

Madison M

A great reminder that not everyone starts with a blank sheet. Thanks for sharing!

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🪄 If you could snap your fingers to make onboarding your team easier..
Hi and happy new year! Do you onboard/train new Smartsheet users at your organization? If so, I’m reaching out as I could use your expertise as we enter the new year. I'd initially posed this to Mobilizers, and am expanding to this broader community to add your perspective. I’m curious about your experience: How do you…