The Smartsheet Blog

Tips from Support: How to Manage Your Team Account

Kelly Anthony — Tue, 21 May 2013 23:00:00 +0000

This one’s for all the Team accounts out there: SysAdmins, we have some words of wisdom for you! We’re dedicating this week’s blog to helping Team account leaders get the most out of User Management tools.

Before jumping into our tips for mastering the management of your Team account in Smartsheet, here are some basic User Management terms to help you get started.

Sheet Creator: This is a user with an assigned license, who can create his/her own sheets.
Collaborator: This is anyone who can access and update data on sheets as a Viewer, Editor, or Admin, but they cannot create their own sheet.
User: The user refers to any person you have granted Smartsheet access to, with or without a license (both Sheet Creators and Collaborators).
Admin: This is a permission level that relates only to sharing an individual sheet. This permission lets a Collaborator work with a sheet with the same rights as the Sheet Creator (L earn more about the different Sharing permissions).
SysAdmin: The SysAdmin is a role specific to Team plans. As a SysAdmin, you are in charge of administrating your Smartsheet Team account including purchasing new licenses (adding more Sheet Creators), removing licenses or users, and bulk transferring sheets from one user’s account to another.

Here are four tips to go beyond these basics and take full advantage of User Management:

Tip #1: Go the extra mile! Add licensed users AND collaborators to your Team account.

We talk with a lot of SysAdmins who mainly focus on adding licensed users to their Team accounts. It’s well worth it to add Collaborators, too. When Collaborators are added to the User Management form, you can monitor when they have logged in, help them with password reset issues, or remove sharing permissions if they leave the company.

Tip #2: Two SysAdmins are better than one.

SysAdmins are powerful leaders of your Smartsheet Team account: they are the only users authorized to add or remove licenses, upgrade your account, change your billing options, download receipts, or cancel your account. As a backup method, add a second SysAdmin. Now you’re covered if you go on vacation or don’t have internet access for a period of time.

Tip #3: Lend a helping hand.

Has someone on your team forgotten their password? While anyone with a Smartsheet account can reset their password from our password reset page, SysAdmins can also help out. To initiate a colleague’s password reset, right-click (or ctrl+click) on the user’s name in the User Management form and select Send Password Reset Mail. For users that don’t log in often, this is a great first troubleshooting step.

When you add new licensed users to your Team account, you can monitor their progress as they activate and jump into their account. The ‘Status’ column in the User Management form will update from ‘Invited’ to ‘Active’ when they begin to use their Smartsheet account. Sometimes the invitation to become a part of your Team account as a licensed user gets lost in Spam folders. You can resend this invitation email by right-clicking on their name.

Tip #4: Know your collaborators.

As a SysAdmin, you have the tools to review some activity within your team’s account: Login History, Download User List, Sheet Access Report, and Remove Email from Sharing.

Monitor your team’s activity in Smartsheet by accessing the Login History in your Account Administration tools.
If you need a quick list of your users, you can download the User List by clicking on ‘More Actions’ in the User Management form.
Use the Sheet Access Report for internal team management, external monitoring, and making sure your sheets are current. Learn more about using the Sheet Access Report.
Update the sharing permissions that have been set on sheets and Remove Email from Sharing. This option removes a collaborator’s access to any particular sheet.

That should get you started! If you’re interested in more specifics about managing users in your Smartsheet Team account as a SysAdmin, this article from our Help Center has more details.

Til next week, dig in and explore.

- Support Team

Real Estate Success: Sell More, Sell Faster, Sell Better

Kelly Anthony — Mon, 20 May 2013 22:00:00 +0000

“Bottom line, Smartsheet helps us make money,” explained Kyle Ball, owner of the Portland, Oregon-based Horizon Home Team, part of Mal & Seitz Real Estate Solutions. Smartsheet as a revenue generator? Do tell.

For the past two years, Ball and his team of real estate agents have been using Smartsheet to manage their sales processes.

“In 2012, our team of six was able to close 113 homes totaling $24 million in sales, landing in the top 5% of real estate teams in the area. Smartsheet is the heartbeat of our business and was critical to making those sales happen.”

For this team, the key benefits from using Smartsheet boil down to three components:

Keeping a handle on lead generation
Visualizing the workflows for successfully closing leads
Effective team management

Powerful Lead Management

“Our approach to lead generation is pretty tenacious,” explained Ball. “We advertise on a variety of online platforms where people come across our company information, whether on Zillow, Craigslist, or another online site where we offer a free list of homes and foreclosures. From here, potential new clients will give us their contact information via the IDX (Internet Database Exchange) system.”

Then the lead information is put it into a master sheet of all leads and an agent specific sheet. “At this point, Smartsheet instantly notifies the agent that they have a new lead, and they can begin building a relationship right away.”

According to Ball, three Smartsheet features are key to lead gen success:

Discussions
Reminders
Search

Ball and his agents keep diligent track of all of their communication with leads in Discussions. When a lead isn’t quite ready to commit, Ball and his agents set a Reminder to follow-up in the future. “These automated reminders are a lifesaver,” said Ball. “When the appropriate amount of time has passed, we get an email from our sheet, reminding us to check in and see how things have progressed since we’ve last spoken. It keeps our relationships strong, and helps us to connect with our clients when they are ready for us.”

“It’s incredible to see how our relationship with our clients have improved. We have an enormous amount of leads that come in every day, and some leads that I have on my sheet have been there for over a year. Circumstances can change quickly for buyers and sellers, and we need to be ready when they’re ready. At least once a week, I get a call from someone who’s ready to buy a house that I haven’t spoken with in months – and all I need to do is pull up the ‘Search’ function to quickly find my Discussion notes for that lead, and I’m set.”

Valuable Workflow Visualization

With all of this lead management tracked in Smartsheet, Ball and his team are able to collaborate on their formula for successful lead nurturing. Symbol Columns like checkboxes and drop-down lists help Ball and his team track both contact dates and type of contact, and also information like motivation to buy and whether or not leads are preapproved for a home loan.

“Putting our lead gen process in Smartsheet helps us document our successful processes. Getting all these variables down in an easily digestible spreadsheet view is really powerful, and has helped our team to grow quickly and learn from each other’s selling experience,” said Ball.

“Thanks to Smartsheet, we have really great systems in place to catch all of the lead information that comes in and then act on it. Nothing falls through the cracks. Plus, it’s all in the cloud, so my agents can update their sheets anywhere, any time - which is critical when you’re in real estate.”

Effective Team Management

Ball’s team consists of six seasoned, highly mobile agents. “We’re incredibly busy and putting in a lot of face-time with our clients,” said Ball. “I have my own clients too, so I’m not a full-time manager. But I still need to know what my team is doing on a daily basis.”

Rather than schedule multiple check-ins throughout the day, Ball automates a daily email from Smartsheet that summarizes his agents’ activity from the previous day. “As part of my morning routine now, I read through all of the emails to get a sense of where my agents are with their leads."

“Daily phone calls just aren’t sustainable,” explained Ball, “More than that, they’re not realistic for our company. The team is composed of some of the best, most experienced agents in the area, and they don’t need to be micro-managed. By using Smartsheet to keep track of their activity, I’m able to manage without being heavy handed or overbearing, and I can still provide support and help when it is needed.”

Using these steps for success, Ball and the Horizon Home Team are on track for their most successful year yet.

Web Form a Day Round-up for May 13 to 17

Thomas Schmitz — Sat, 18 May 2013 07:00:00 +0000

This May, each weekday Smartsheet shares a new web form on out Twitter account. You can get these forms for yourself or take inspiration for your business, club, school or, well, who knows? You're limited only by the imagination. Here are last week's web forms:

And be sure to follow @Smartsheet on Twitter.

Capture Ideas with a Mobile Web Form

Thomas Schmitz — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:45:00 +0000

Good ideas have a habit of arriving at inconvenient moments, usually when pen and paper are unavailable or using a keyboard is perilous. A technology I use to get around this is Apple iOS voice to text. On the iPhone, whenever you’re presented with a text box iOS almost always includes a microphone icon. That means, when you’re on the go, you can record a new idea with the same ease as conducting a Google voice search.

Until recently, I used a popular note taking application. Unfortunately, all my ideas were either mashed together as one big text file or separated into multiple files, one per recording. Organizing, collating, and making everything usable was tedious.

Then it struck me, I could use Smartsheet to capture my voice to text transcriptions in individual cells. I created a sheet and added a web form with only one field, a text box.

When I hit the submit button the form returns to itself, presenting a new place for another new idea or note.

I just took the form link from here,

And pasted it into the Send the user to this URL field.

I now had a loop.

Next, I opened the form in my iPhone’s Safari web browser and pressed the Send To button at the bottom of the screen.

Then I pressed the Add to Home Screen button.

Which added the form to my iPhone’s screen, just as though it were an app.

Now I can record and transcribe notes while on the go.

Then at my leisure, add categories and sort them.

Since I began doing this I haven’t even opened that popular note taking application I used to record into.

Here is one final thought. Stay safe. Don’t use this on the road. Using voice transcription still requires touching your screen. When you touch your screen you’re taking your eyes off the road.

Tips from Support: All About System Columns

Kelly Anthony — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:30:00 +0000

With the latest Smartsheet update, we added a new column type that gives you the ability to automatically keep track of certain data points like a “modified by” date or “created by” date – also known as System Columns.

System Columns are really handy for instantaneously keeping track of certain data points. They immediately add certain types of data into your rows, tracking information like the date a new row was added, or the name of the person that last updated a row.

This week, we want to give you some tips and tricks to customize one of these new System Columns – the Auto-Number Column, to fit your processes and streamline your collaboration.

Automagic! Using Auto-Number System Columns

Automatically adding a unique identifier to a row is helpful in so many different scenarios: requests for help, customer orders, maintenance updates... the list goes on.

You can use the Auto-Number column to assign a simple value (e.g. 1, 2, 3) to new row submissions. If you’d like to make this column a bit more powerful and specific to your processes, change the Display Format criteria to create a combination of numbers and letters that provide context for your unique process.

Here are some examples of how you could use the Auto-Number Column to help streamline your processes:

Track Submissions by Quarter Looking to break sheet submissions down by quarter? An Auto-Number Column is perfect for this. At the beginning of the quarter, insert a Prefix value of “Q1-” in the column Display Format. With this formatting updated, when new items are entered to your sheet, the Row ID will automatically include “Q1-” in front of a unique number. When Q2 rolls around, all you need to do is update the Prefix from “Q1-” to “Q2-”.

The unique numbers will continue, with the new quarter added as a prefix. If you would like a new starting number at the beginning of each quarter, all you need to do is enter a Starting Number of “1” to the Starting Number field in the formatting form.

Track Submissions by Date Another handy prefix for Auto-Number Columns: add a date prefix to the Auto-Number Column to combine an automated unique ID with the date. In the prefix field, add “{MM}/{DD}/{YY} -”. This specifies to append the date in MM/DD/YY format to the prefix before a unique ID number.

There are four other types of system-generated Columns to choose from, in addition to Auto-Number:

Created (Date) This System Column is super handy for keeping track of the exact date and time that a row was created – GREAT to use with web forms!
Created By Use this System Column to keep track of the email address of any collaborator who created a row.
Modified (Date) Use this System Column to keep track of the last time a change was made to each row.
Modified By This System Column will automatically keep track of the email address for the last person who updated data in a row.

NOTE: For both ‘Modified (Date)’ and ‘Modified By’ columns, Discussion updates, new attachments, and formatting changes (like a different font color) are not logged in this column.

A few other handy things to know about the new System Columns in Smartsheet:

Each type of System Column can only be used once in each sheet.
The cells in System Columns start out empty, and will generate value as you and others input data and save your sheet.
The values in System Columns are display-only. You can adjust the formatting options for System Columns to adjust the appearance of these values.
If you change an existing column in your sheet to a Modified Date/By or Created Date/By system column, you will overwrite any existing cell data you have in those columns.

What are your ideas for using System Columns to save time? Let us know.

Til next week, dig in and explore!

- Support Team

Web Form Frenzy Continues this Week

Thomas Schmitz — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:00:00 +0000

To celebrate the release of Smartsheet’s smarter web forms we’re asking you to give our new features a test drive then tell us how you use Smartsheet web forms. You may win one of five American Express $100 gift cards!

Click Here to Enter Web Form Frenzy

Also, each weekday in May we’re offering example forms to inspire you and get you started. This week Smartsheet will present five new forms beginning with today's Benefits Enrollment Form. To get them, follow us on Twitter at @Smartsheet.

Last wek we shared:

Web Forms and Online Survey Advice From the Experts

Thomas Schmitz — Thu, 09 May 2013 07:00:00 +0000

Last Saturday, Smartsheet released some amazing upgrades to our already popular web forms. To help mark the occassion we reached out to some of the Internet's top marketers, designers and usability experts and asked them to share their advice with you. The response was phenomenal. We heard from people like Rand Fishkin, Tim Ash and...well, take a look for yourself. You can read more about all the contributors at the end of this piece.

We asked two simple questions. Give one piece of advice for designing web forms and another for crafting online surveys. Also, we wanted their best, unflitered advice, so we asked them to speak in broad terms and not limit themselves to Smartsheet.

While reading the experts' responses we saw a few themes:

Forms

Embrace brevity. Keep your form short.
Avoid the unnecessary. If you can do without, don't ask.
Create clarity. In field names and form fields, show exactly what you want.

Surveys

Test. Try your survey on a few people before you send it to everyone.
Set expectations. Let people know what, why, and how long the survey is.
Keep people engaged. Be clear, but also be creative and original.

Now that you know the highlights, it's time to dig into exactly what each of the experts had to say. You'll likely recognize some of these names. To learn more about them, you can click on their names and it will take you straight to their biographies at the end of this post.

Web Form Design Tips

Tim Ash

Most web forms ask for too much information too early in the process, which make web visitors/prospects either uncomfortable or impatient with filling them out. That’s why it’s best to reduce fields to include only those that are absolutely necessary for completing a transaction. Your first consideration for limiting form fields is context. For instance, it is completely fine for an e-commerce site to ask for a customer’s address if that is needed for shipping an order. But it doesn’t make that much sense to ask the same information for a web download or an online subscription. Another consideration is value: is your offer valuable enough that customers would want to give up that much personal information to get it? The point is, you need to limit form fields based on what’s absolutely essential and depending on the perceived value of your offer so as not to discourage visitors from completing the form-fill process.

Adam Audette

When programming custom forms, it shows love when the form auto-forwards when a field is completed. Small but important detail.

Lisa Barone

Remember this is a relationship and don't overstep by asking questions out of the scope of what you're trying to accomplish. If you don't need their phone number, don't ask for it. If there's no reason to hawk your newsletter, don't do it. Every question you ask costs you a small degree of trust with your visitor.

Kimberly Berg

Avoid forcing people to click on a tool tip to explain how to fill out a form field. Either put the format inside the field itself or offer examples in text beneath the field. If requiring a phone number, always provide a reason why. In addition, if the purpose is to call them back, request a good time to call and indicate their time zone.

Will Critchlow

If you are using multi-part forms over a number of pages, check out paditrack.com for help analysing drop-off rates at each stage (based on your Google Analytics data).

Rand Fishkin

Don't make people think! Build them short and simple, or not at all.

Elizabeth Harrin

Test your form on some colleagues first so you know if your questions are clear enough and generate the responses you want.

Jim Hedger

In some cases it is advantageous to allow Googlebot to crawl through simple forms on your pages. If a form on a high quality page leads to information Google is interested in, Googlebot will follow it, assuming it is coded as a form. You can block Googlebot from spidering through your forms or any documents accessed through your forms by using a robots.txt file, and noindex, nofollow tags.

Ian Lurie

If you use Google Analytics, set up an onClick event for each field in the form. That way, you can track abandonment rates and know which field causes the highest abandonment rate.

Peter Meyers

If you don't need it, don't ask it. I can't count how many times a critical conversion process was killed by marketing asking for a bunch of data that scared off customers and then sat in a pile. Job one is to make the sale. Job 1-1/2 is to make the customer happy. Your pet data is gravy at best.

Gillian Muessig

KISS, people! KISS! You really DON'T need all that info. You need the basics and can get more once you've come to know me.

Online Survey Design Tips

Tim Ash

It’s the same case with web surveys: they are either perceived as time-consuming or too difficult to fill out. Overcome objections by making sure that you present visitors with conceptually-unified information. Take care to reorder or split up fields into categories so visitors don’t think that your survey will take up a lot of their time and effort. You can also make web surveys seem less painful by adding progress bars, which tell them where they are in the survey flow and how much longer they need to complete the task.

Adam Audette

Best to keep surveys short, crisp, and to the point. Too many complicated or multi-faceted selections can hurt involvement.

Lisa Barone

Ask for information in creative ways to keep users engaged with the survey. Instead of asking to rate speakers, name them and ask who was better. Instead of using the same cold script everyone else does, inject some personality and make it a fun experience. Visitors will stick around and provide the information you want as long as you're giving them something for their efforts - sometimes that just means a chuckle.

Kimberly Berg

Never present them to first time users who have landed on a page for the first time. If it's longer than one question, indicate how many questions and how long the survey will take.

Will Critchlow

Send them to a smallish sample of people before hitting the "go live" button for real. Getting a handful of people to fill in your form will likely throw up confusions, misunderstandings and poorly-worded questions. Find out about these *before* you spend money or goodwill on real responses.

Rand Fishkin

Ask questions that are easy for your audience to answer. Use email or in-person interviews for more complex, open-ended feedback.

Elizabeth Harrin

Be sure to include a 'not applicable' answer option for your questions as oftentimes people will be stumped and not able to reply to the question at all. If you've made the question compulsory, they'll enter any old data and that will skew your results.

Jim Hedger

Use surveys on clients' or your own Facebook business pages. Everybody loves giving their opinion, especially if it only takes a couple seconds to do so. Facebook surveys tend to get good response and can be widely distributed quite quickly. As various measurements of social engagement are search signals, building engagement using surveys is a good and probably fun thing to do.

Ian Lurie

This one's obvious, but rarely practiced: Keep your survey under 2 minutes completion time.

Peter Meyers

Respect your visitors. Ask the questions that will help them, not the questions your committee agrees will make good fodder for the annual report. Focusing on 3-4 pieces of truly actionable data will increase response rates and provide real business value.

Gillian Muessig

WHAT you ask and HOW you ask it are one and the same thing. HOW you ask will severely impact the answers you get and the reactions to you and your business you generate. Be mindful of the impact of your choice of words.

The Web Form and Survey Experts

Tim Ash: SiteTuners, Inc.
CEO

Tim Ash is the CEO of SiteTuners, a leading conversion rate optimization agency and the author of the bestselling book Landing Page Optimization. He is chairperson of Conversion Conference and is a highly-regarded presenter at many leading conferences.

Adam Audette: RKG
Chief Knowledge Officer

As a passionate online marketer, Adam has worked with leading brands from Amazon to Zappos. He frequently speaks at events like SMX Advanced and Nation Association of Government Webmasters.

Lisa Barone: Overit
VP of Strategy

Lisa Barone is the Vice President of Strategy at Overit, a digital agency Redefining Creative through motion graphics, development, design, SEO/PPC, PR, content & social. Lisa is considered one inbound marketing's most gifted writers and brand managers.

Kimberly Berg: Internet Marketing Ninjas
Usability and User Experience Analyst

Kimberly Berg’s is a highly respected usability, testing, design, and SEO expert as well as a popular conference speaker. She is the founder of Cre8pc, recently acquired by Internet Marketing Ninjas where she serves on the executive management team.

Will Critchlow: Distilled
Founder

Will Critchlow co-founded Distilled in 2005. They provide online marketing services from offices in London, New York and Seattle, hosts the popular SearchLove conference series.. Will owns a share of a full cask of whisky he'll bottle in 2015.

Rand Fishkin: SEOmoz
CEO

CEO & founder of Moz, TAGFEE evangelist, passionate about all things inbound marketing.

Elizabeth Harrin: The Otobos Group
Director

Elizabeth wrote Social Media for Project Managers and Project Management in the Real World. Her new book, Shortcuts for Success: Project Management in the Real World, will be out later this year. She's an enthusiastic but slow crocheter.

Jim Hedger: Digital Always Media
Partner

A partner at Digital Always Media Jim hosts the weekly WebmasterRadio.FM show Webcology.

Ian Lurie: Portent
CEO

Founder & CEO of Portent. Internet marketer for 18 years. Yes, 18 years. No, it's not a mistake. Remember Prodigy? Compuserve?

Peter Meyers: SEOmoz
Marketing Scientist

Dr. Pete is a Cognitive Psychologist and resident Marketing Scientist at SEOmoz. He enjoys chasing the Google algorithm, chasing his two children, and chasing his work day with a nice glass of port.

Gillian Muessig: SEOmom

A co-founder of SEOmoz, Gillian speaks throughout the world on the subjects of Search, Tech, Startups, and Emerging Markets. She is an Angel Investor, a CEO coach at NewGen Broadcasting, mentor to dozens of startups, and Board member in companies in 4 continents.

Tips from Support: Create a Sheet with Multiple Web Forms

Kelly Anthony — Wed, 08 May 2013 01:14:45 +0000

This weekend we made some major updates to one of the most popular features in Smartsheet: web forms. They make collecting information, collaborating, and taking action simple. Now, it’s easier to customize web forms – check out the drag-and-drop form builder, new custom field options, and nifty confirmation options in the ‘Forms Options’ field of the form builder.

In addition to these enhancements, it’s now possible to save more than one web form per sheet.

When Would You Need Multiple Forms Per Sheet?

Multiple forms per sheet are handy when you’re looking to gather information from different groups of people, but want to compile that information in the same spot. For example, let’s say you want a way to collect information from your website from people who are either (1) requesting information on products or (2) those who would like to be a reseller of your products.

For both of these inquiries, some of the information that you’ll want to collect is the same (for example, personal information like name, email address, and phone number). However, each will also have a few different questions tailored to their needs (for example, reseller region from those inquiring about reseller opportunities).

Keeping all inquiries on the same sheet will save your team time and hassle because everyone is working from the same place.

We’ll walk you through how to set up multiple forms per sheet, and how to use ‘Hidden Fields’ and ‘Default Values’ to keep the different information straight.

The Nitty Gritty

Just like everything else in Smartsheet, the basis for your process begins in a sheet. Start from a blank sheet, a template from our Template Gallery, or one of your existing sheets.

Here’s the sheet for our example of collecting both Product and Reseller Inquiries.

With the sheet designed, the next step is customizing your web form. To set-up and edit, click the ‘Web Forms’ tab on the bottom of your sheet and click ‘Create New Form’.

This will take you to the Web Form Editor. By default, the title of the form corresponds to the sheet name and the fields of the form correspond to the names of the sheet columns. All of these fields are editable. Web form items are on the left, and when you select one item, its editable properties appear on the right.

We’ll start by making a form for Product Inquiries. The drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to move around fields and group certain questions together, to get your web form just right.

Once you’ve customized the form fields, add a field for ‘Source Page’ – since you’ll have inquiries from both Product and Reseller folks. Make this field a ‘Hidden Field’ (so it won’t be seen by anyone filling out your form) with the default value of ‘Product web page.’ Now, each time the Product form is submitted, this default value will be added to your sheet – automatic differentiation!

Follow these same steps to customize your web form for Reseller Inquiries, with different columns for Reseller-specific information.

Now, you can post the URLs for each web form on your website, and all responses will compile in the same sheet. To check on the status of your web forms, click the ‘Web Form’ tab for a dashboard view of all your forms.

This is just one example of a scenario in which multiple forms are helpful. Use multiple forms per sheet to consolidate job applicants, surveys to multiple groups, and detailed feedback forms.

The possibilities are endless – what will you do with them? Tell us here in a comment, or enter the Web Form Frenzy for a chance to win!

Til next week, dig in and explore!

- Support Team

How to Use Web Forms Like Loyola University

Kelly Anthony — Mon, 06 May 2013 21:57:38 +0000

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night, suddenly panicked that you've forgotten to take care of something at work? You go in to the office the next day with the same nagging feeling – was that request emailed to you? Or was it a conversation you had with a colleague at your desk? Sorting through a scattered process is a real-life nightmare, stressful to say the least.

A little over a year ago, Stacey Hughes, Director of Advancement and Information Services at Loyola University was all too familiar with similar scenarios. Her team, the gift processing department, handles every single donation that comes to the University – and all of the personal information that comes along with donations. And as the keepers of such a vital database, they are barraged with data requests from all other departments.

"We had been using Excel and email to try and track all of these requests. It simply wasn’t working, we were drowning in data,” said Hughes. It’s no surprise that Smartsheet web forms changed the game for this team. “Smartsheet web forms have streamlined our department's processes. Now when others need data from us, they simply fill out a web form and the request goes straight into a sheet. Smartsheet saves us time, fosters accountability, and promotes a culture of transparency and respect."

Pretty slick, right? Here’s how you can follow in Hughes’ footsteps:

Step 1: Import old Excel spreadsheet data request form into Smartsheet. For years, Hughes and her team had an Excel file posted on Loyola’s intranet for anyone to fill out and then email to the gift processing department when they had a data request. To begin the transition to Smartsheet, Hughes imported this spreadsheet to Smartsheet.
Step 2: Customize your web form. Once a spreadsheet is in Smartsheet, creating a corresponding web form is straightforward. Click the ‘Web Forms’ button on the bottom tab of your sheet and the web form builder will appear.

Use the web form builder to customize the web form – turn column names from your sheet into detailed instructions on your web forms, make certain fields required for submissions, or re-order questions.

Hughes explained that one of the biggest hurdles her department faced was explaining to other departments all of the specifics that need to be included in a data request before her team can process it. With the Excel forms that Loyola had been using, there was a lot of room for user error, and as a result, Hughes and her team spent a lot of time clarifying requests and chasing down missing details.

Now, with Smartsheet web forms, request expectations are clear, and requests won’t make it onto the gift processing team’s sheet unless they are completely and accurately filled out.

Step 3: Make web forms available to others. You have a variety of options to send your web form out to the masses: each web form has a unique URL that you can email to others or embed the web form itself on a frequently used resource page.

Hughes made her web forms available on Loyola’s intranet for anyone at the University to access when they have a data request for her department.

Step 4: Use Smartsheet to stay organized and take action as web forms are submitted. Once others begin using web forms, inbound requests come directly into the University’s gift processing department’s sheet, rather than an email inbox. The team has Alerts set on their sheet to keep them up-to-date when a new request comes in. Hughes can assign a team member to complete a request, and team members use Smartsheet to track the steps to completing requests. Hughes and her staff attach completed requests to their corresponding rows, and then send the row to the requestor.

Step 5: Share Smartsheet with others to keep communication open and maintain transparency. Other departments have access to the data request sheet. Now, when someone has a question about the status of their request, they can check Smartsheet for an update rather than interrupting their co-workers. Time is saved and communication is improved. Hughes also uses the Calendar View to show other departments what her team is working on.

“Changing the Way We Work”

“I’m addicted to Smartsheet,” says Hughes. “It’s the way that we work, I can’t imagine running my department without it.”

The benefits to Hughes and her department of using Smartsheet include:

Unified formatting for all data requests. The gift processing team gets all the information from others that they need the first time around, saving time and frustration.
No more information locked in inboxes. Now it’s all in Smartsheet, so the team can easily work together to complete requests.
History is kept and steps are archived. When similar requests come in, the steps to completion are documented and easy to reference and replicate.
Improved accountability. Switching to the Calendar view keeps the team on track and communicates to other departments clearly what the gift processors have on their plates
Increased communication. Tracking everything in Smartsheet keeps all departments on the same page.

Streamlining the data request process is just one of the ways that Hughes and her team are using Smartsheet – read the Loyola University case study for the full story.

Welcome to the Web Form Hall of Fame, Loyola University!

- Kelly

Smarter, Easier Web Forms

Jenny Gruening — Sat, 04 May 2013 09:00:00 +0000

Smarter, Easier Web Forms: Our Latest Smartsheet Release. Today, we’re excited to announce that Smartsheet's web forms, one of our most popular features, are now supercharged! They’re easier to create and more customizable, giving you the power to take action on information you collect. Web forms are the only data collection tool that let you easily gather information, automatically consolidate responses, and take action to share, assign and track progress.

Here, our vice president of product management, Eric Browne, gives a quick tour of the latest updates:

Web Forms - Supercharged

Creating a form and customizing it is easier than ever. Highlights to this release include:

Simple drag-and-drop form creator. Creating, editing and previewing your form is now a snap.

More form customization options. Brand your web form, add section dividers and date pickers, and send confirmation emails.

Improved form management. Add new entries on the top or bottom of your sheet, and activate or deactivate forms.

Create multiple forms per sheet. More options, more data.

All the great existing form features are still available - you can embed web forms into any webpage, upload any type of file, and quickly take action on your data.

Getting Started with Web Forms

Jumpstart your work with some of our handiest web form templates:

Event Registration: Register, track, and manage customers.

Feedback Form: Get feedback, take action, and track it all.

Application Form: Collect and track online job applications, with resumes.

Share and Learn About Web Forms

See Web Forms in Action: Want a hands-on demonstration? Register for a live training webinar with an expert – a great way to introduce your entire team to web forms!

For a quick dose of daily web form inspiration, follow us on Twitter (@smartsheet). Each day this month, we’re tweeting out a different, ready-to-use web form.

Take some time to explore the new web form features, and then tell us how you’re using them. We’ve got five $100 gift cards to give away in exchange in our web form frenzy contest!

We’re thrilled about this release and excited to supercharge your web forms! Stay tuned for more exciting updates!

-Jenny