Smartsheet
Smartsheet vs. Google Docs and Google Sheets
Project Management |
 Smartsheet |
 Google Sheets |
 Google Docs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gantt View | Included | Not Included | Not Included |
| Calendar View | Included | Not Included | Not Included |
| Kanban Board / Card View | Included | Not Included | Not Included |
| Sub-Tasks (collapse/expand) | Included | Not Included | Not Included |
| Task Dependencies | Included | Not Included | Not Included |
| Reminders | Included | Not Included | Not Included |
| Cross-Project Resource Views | Included | Not Included | Not Included |
| Cross-Project Summary Views | Included | Not Included | Not Included |
Flexible Work Management |
|||
| Spreadsheet View | Included | Included | Not Included |
| Create Custom Fields | Included | Included | Not Included |
| Filters | Included | Included | Not Included |
| Formulas | Included | Included | Not Included |
| Formatting | Included | Included | Included |
| Cross-Sheet Search | Included | Not Included | Not Included |
| Graphs/Charts | Included | Included | Included |
Collaboration |
|||
| Share Online (internal or external) | Included | Included | Included |
| Publish | Included | Included | Not Included |
| File Attachments | Included | Not Included | Not Included |
| Comments | Included | Included | Included |
| Notifications | Included | Included | Included |
| Change History | Included | Included | Included |
| Updates Requests | Included | Not Included | Not Included |
| Forms | Included | Included | Not Included |
Top 5 Reasons to Manage Work in Smartsheet over Google Docs & Google Sheets
1. It’s Simple, Intuitive, and Visual
On the visual front, Smartsheet has Google beat with three features:
Hierarchy in Smartsheet enables you to organize your work with indented rows and collapsible sections. Plus, with the parent-child relationship between rows, you can write formulas to roll up key information nested in one group or another.
Column types in Smartsheet have special properties that make your sheets more powerful. Decide whether a column should contain text, numbers, a contact list, a date, a dropdown list, checkboxes, an auto-numbering sequence, and even symbols. You can quickly convey everything from priority to status with the range of column types.
Images in Smartsheet are dynamic, as they snap right into a cell and remain in context when rows are moved or resized. No complicated functions to write or time wasted working around the limitations with Google Sheet
2. Streamlines Everyday Collaboration
Google offers good collaboration functionality for documents and sheets - it’s easy to comment, share, etc. But productivity is more than document collaboration. It involves planning, communicating, organizing, and prioritizing. One way Smartsheet promotes collaboration is with the ability to request updates from others. You can request updates on individual cells, columns, or entire rows within a sheet, and make it clear to recipients what action to take. They provide their updates in an intuitive form and the updates post directly back into your sheet.
3. Helps Visualize Your Work
The very nature of work today requires that you collaborate with a range of individuals and teams, potentially in different locations and with different work preferences. Smartsheet solves for this with its many views - Grid, Gantt, Calendar, and Card - so that individuals and teams can consume and share information the way they want to. Changing views is as simple as clicking a button.
Use Grid View to create project plans, assign tasks, and update status in one, familiar interface.
Gantt View allows you to instantly create timelines, set milestones, and track progress.
Visualize deadlines and important dates in Calendar View.
Visually track tasks through the stages of your project or process with the Kanban-style Card View.
4. Reduces the Reporting ‘Tax’
The burden of reporting - manually reminding, collecting, and updating inputs across your internal and external teams - is tedious and time consuming. Smartsheet eliminates or reduces this ‘tax’. With Smartsheet reports, you can roll up information across multiple sheets into one, always up-to-date source of the truth. Reports are real-time and bi-directional, so that every change made in a report is reflected in the underlying source sheet. While you might be able to code something that mimics this in Google Sheets, it will take much more effort than in Smartsheet.
5. Brings All Your Work Together
Although with Google Sites you can make internal wiki-like pages, Smartsheet Sights are different. They are designed to enhance the value of information in Smartsheet, by exposing it in better, more useful ways. Sights help you showcase the valuable information across your sheets and reports at the level of detail you choose, with no coding required. Surface a project sheet or report, summarize key information in a summary list, or show data, like key metrics to improve transparency across your work.