Tips for Implementing a Smartsheet Development Program

When people start to understand what Smartsheet is capable of they can go a little nuts with content creation. As wonderful as Smartsheet is, its administrative controls leave something to be desired. Thus, your organization’s Smartsheet environment can get out of control pretty fast if you haven’t planned for this.

In this article we discuss recommended infrastructure and process that you should put in place BEFORE you start to hand out Smartsheet licenses. The goal is to find the optimal balance between governance/structure and empowering your users to realize the full potential of Smartsheet while minimizing the risk that unbrideled development can create for your organization.

Service Accounts

Ask your IT Administrator to create two service accounts for Smartsheet, one to serve as the primary System Admin and one to serve as a test user. Create with or transfer important assets to the Admin account. If you use the Control Center, make the Admin account the Program Lead. Likewise, if you set up any integrations with other systems, ensure that they are configured with the Admin account. This account will be critical for business continuity as the original Smartsheet Champions change positions or leave the company. This will also allow your personal Smartsheet Environment to be easier to navigate.

Smartsheet offers a lot of different ways to share content and at times the permissions of licensed vs unlicensed users can be confusing. Sometimes it can take some careful consideration to decide how to organize and share content to protect sensitive information, but also allow some edits. The test user account will be important for testing permissions before you release new content into production to ensure you are practicing least privilege principles and are creating the user experience you intend to create.

Helpdesk

As you create content your users are going to find bugs and have a lot of ideas for improvements. Create yourself a basic Smartsheet Helpdesk ticketing system where you can collect all feedback and requests. As your environment grows and you train more administrators and super users you will be able to assign tickets and track completion status from a central location. This will also serve as a great source of metrics and will likely be the precursor to a more formal development backlog.

Training Resources

Create a central repository where all training materials will be stored and make sure it’s accessible to all Smartsheet Users. Add links to your Helpdesk dashboard and your company’s intranet if you have one. Also, make sure to set clear expectations that training materials are a requirement for any new content that is created. Don’t let creation of training materials fall behind content creation because it can be extremely difficult to catch up.

Make a plan to train your users on basic utilization of the Smartsheet core application. If your users run into issues navigating the platform itself you may run into bigger issues when you try to implement your actual Smartsheet Applications down the road.

Process for User Management

The User Management Tools in the admin center have several major limitations including:

1. User data cannot be used by Smartsheet Assets

2. Data that you can enter for users, such as the department, is not included in exports from the admin center

3. Only System Administrators can manage users, leading to issues with practicing least privilege principle

4. You can set up auto provisioning with your active directory, but this only provides access to your Smartsheet environment, not content, and there is no clear notification to System Admins to trigger the next steps of onboarding or offboarding

Therefore, it is highly recommended that you create an Employee Database in Smartsheet that is coupled to a User Management process. The scope of this solution will really depend on what premium applications are included in your Smartsheet Account and your ability to integrate with other systems in your organization. The goal is to standardize and automate as much as possible so that new users can get setup quickly and other administrators can execute the process without becoming System Administrators themselves.

Your Employee Database will also serve as a lookup table for other applications. For example, if you assign Projects to Johnny and Mable, you can more easily provide visibility to their manager or department head by cross-referencing the Employee Database. Furthermore, this will allow you to more easily know who your users are and share that information with non-system admins more easily.

Process for Group Management

Organizations with more than 20 employees should generally be sharing content with groups instead of with users.

Like with User Management, the Group Management tools in the Smartsheet Admin Center have significant limitations. One major issue is that there is zero visibility to end users.

We recommend that you publish a list of groups with their purpose and permissions for your Smartsheet Users to reference. This should be coupled with a mechanism to request group creation, view group membership, and request changes to group membership. If you have access to Bridge, you can automate a lot of this and grant other users permission to manage group membership without providing access to the admin center.

Process for Application Development

Create some basic processes to govern Smartsheet Development. The scope of what rules and tools you put in place will depend on the size and organization of your company. At minimum, require users to register their applications, set minimum requirements for user and technical documentation, create a process for how to officially release an application, and devise a strategy to separate your development environment from your production environment. Communicate clear expectations from day one to help keep your environment organized and reduce the risk of disruptions to business continuity.

Service Catalog

The more content that is created in Smartsheet the higher the risk that your users will start duplicating each other’s work and the greater the risk to business continuity as employees leave the company. Prevent shadow IT and increase visibility by requiring users to register new applications they create in a Service Catalog. Track details like purpose, audience, development squad, current administrator, etc and make sure the database is available to all Smartsheet users. This will also be a great resource when trying to understand the actual value Smartsheet has brought to your organization.

Master Data/Reference Data

Consider what master data and reference data (e.g., departments with profit center and department owner) might be needed for your Smartsheet Applications and create tables in Smartsheet when applicable. Integrate with the source data when you can and be sure to register these databases in your Service Catalog. This will prevent users from creating redundant resources in Smartsheet that will become out of sync.

Super Users/Administrators

Finally, don’t try to manage your organization’s Smartsheet Account on your own. Identify other potential super users and administrators early and work together to refine infrastructure and Smartsheet Development procedures. Let your team of super users organically grow as more employees express interest in creating content for their departments, but make sure any new content creators are trained on the procedures you put in place.

Conclusions

Implementing Smartsheet at your organization will enable your employees to work faster, better, and more effectively than ever. You will realize incredible value by empowering them to create their own tools to drive efficiencies; however, guardrails must be put in place to reduce the risk of unbridled creation to your organization. Follow these reccomendations to strike the optimal balance between governance and empowerment so that you can unlock the full potential of Smartsheet.