Smartsheet Limitations

Hi Jags,

I've been quite vocal about Smartsheet's PPM feature set and idiosyncrasies in the past. While it does a lot of things really well, there are loads more fundamental PPM features/functions missing that didn't even make your list, including:

1. No project baselines (this is the biggest wow for me as it is PM 101 stuff).
2. No access to time values (dates only I'm afraid)
3. Cannot deploy a program of work in an standardised manner (i.e. reports & dashboards)
4. No system date values outside of UTC time (i.e. system dates have been broken for ~2 years and this needs to be fixed now!)
5. Cannot format parent task bars in Gantts (someone selected grey as an override)
6. Cannot determine successor tasks without creating my own formulas
7. Have to manually edit currency types
8. Cannot link dashboard Metrics widgets to Reports (i.e. only cells in sheets can be used)
9. There is a hard limit on cell-links (that will break my SCC config in ~ 8 months)
10. 100 cross-sheet reference limit
11. 5000 row limit in sheets
12. No proper drilldown from reports/dashboards (like PowerBI)
13. Manual sharing messages in SCC (seriously, I have to copy/paste into a field from Notepad each time)
14. Cannot interact with the Activity Log (i.e. I can view the Activity Log but cannot reference it in a sheet) 
15. Manually requested backups (say what?)

I can probably help with some of the features you posted and believe you need to clarify some further:

• Dashboards - What did you mean by 1 set of data per dashboard? I do agree with the limited ability to customise and the widgets are certainly hamstrung.
• Document Management - Yes, the poorly implemented version control and sharing is woefully inadequate. What other file formats would you like to see included in the import function?
• Graphs - To pull data from more than one sheet, I'd suggest creating a Report (using data from multiple sheets) and using that to drive your Graph
• Merging sheets - I would love to be able to merge cells too. Were you referring to multiple sheet tabs like in Excel? If so, that's what the individual Smartsheet tabs represent. It's not document level like Excel.
• Milestones - Not sure what you mean here by mis-alignment.
• Pivots - Yes agree with this totally. The Smartsheet Pivot app is essentially useless. You can only pivot on numbers and the 1 column limitation is painful. With cross-sheet references (even considering the limits), the same functionality (including hierarchy) can be achieved with a bit of work.
• Resource views - I'm not sure that Smartsheet will want to give away free access to Resource Allocations to users with Collaborator licenses
• Template Changes - Are you referring to SCC deploying updates to templates or new templates? Or is this something else?

I've submitted Enhancement Requests for some of the more pressing features above and have seen countless more submitted or captured here. I'm continually frustrated/dismayed by the Product Team's apparent lack of concern for their customer's needs or for the remediation of the gaping holes in the application's functionality, instead delivering changes that are unwarranted or unrequested (Facebook Chat, Profiles, UX re-design, shifting colour hues etc.)

Kind regards,

Chris McKay

Hi Shaine,

I'm not shooting the messenger, but no. No more Product Enhancement Requests. I've submitted loads myself and not heard back about a single one. Most of what I listed above are bugs or fundamentals for a tool like this. Why submit another Product Request when you already have 100s of customers telling you over many years to do something? Surely the Product Team must be aware that the system has shortfalls. Seriously, they need to fix the dates and provide baseline functionality. How much more validation do Smartsheet need other than what is obtained through the channels Robin indicated, not to mention what is apparant when you review what your competitors offer.

Robin's response in the other thread has all the right rhetoric, but in practice little of what he says eventuates. I am in contact with most of your teams frequently (at least every few days). There are still functions that defy explanation being implemented and others that are poorly developed or unfinished. Perhaps the data your customer success, sales and support teams collate is summarily discounted by your product team's senior leadership and the research team.

Robin talks about the commercial considerations of balancing developer resources with return, but I can tell you that the market you are in is getting more crowded every day and you will begin to lose long-term customers if you continue to prioritise the development of modules via a process that runs completely counter to everything Robin indicated is true.

Kind regards,

Chris McKay

I have been able to work around most if not all the issue I have ran into in building our Project Workspace that will be intended to be the Single Source of Truth for All Internal and External Resources. But as I am coming to an end in building out this Massive Workspace 100 Plus Sheets all "Talking" to each other, workflows functioning, dash boards, reports, etc.

I go to make a copy to save it to another version (currently on 5.0), while I start beta testing new sheets and reporting within the Workspace. Now I come to find out there is a 100 item limit on coping. Oh boy that is an issue as I can not break up the Workspace as I will lose the cross linking.

Anyone have a solution to this? I still need to add several subcontract folders, reports and dashboards. I have attached a picture of the current Workspace Structure.

Rob