In September 2023, some of the Project Plan Services (PPS) team flew across the pond to sunny Seattle, Washington, United States of America for Smartsheet ENGAGE 2023. ENGAGE is Smartsheet’s annual conference that saw nearly 4,000 individuals descend on the sleepless city.
The first official day of ENGAGE 2023 opened with a Keynote from Mark Mader, President and CEO at Smartsheet. This marks the unveiling of Smartsheet’s upcoming new features and functionalities complete with demonstrations and examples. With gasps and cheers from the audience you know Smartsheet have listened to feedback and is leading the conversation with the dynamic work platform.
“Change is always hard, but when there is disruption, we also see a ton of potential,” he said. “We’re trying to change how you get work done so we can do more,” Mark continued. “We’re trying to harness technology so we can help operate at what we call peak human. Operating at peak human starts with a fundamental shift. That fundamental shift is your mindset.”
A key takeaway from the keynote that would reflect across the next few days was the 3 key pillars that Smartsheet would focus on for the next year. Modern Project and Portfolio Management (PPM), Marketing and Creative Management and finally, Strategic Transformation. As a Platinum Smartsheet Partner, we too will be following these key pillars for 2024 in our content and support so if you want to stay up to date be sure to keep your eyes peeled across the website and social media.
We were excited to learn all about the new features and functionalities coming to Smartsheet in the next few months. Here are a few highlights:
Updated grid view – a more streamlined view that is easy to adapt as you need with easy-to-access filters and hiding the controls when you don’t need them. A huge change will be real-time updating meaning any changes are shown immediately including to others viewing the sheet at the same time.
New timeline view - allowing you to see the bigger picture at the click of a button, such as how your projects are interacting with each other and seeing critical dates at a glance. This will lend itself perfectly once the native integration of Resource Management launches.
Generative AI – know what you want but not sure where you need to look or where to start. Tell Smartsheet and it will do the hard work for you so you can get started faster, creating custom solutions that meets you where you are to solve your business problems. Smartsheet’s integrated AI will not only help with building solutions but will also help to analyse data and write formulae for you.
Loading sheets of any size within seconds – yes, really! The presentation showed a demo of a 5 million cell sheet loading instantly, with links and complex formulae. Coming Spring 2024 for Early Adopters.
Content Library – an integrated approach to Digital Asset Management (DAM), sitting across all your sheets meaning key assets and resources are kept centrally for all users to access across all sheets. This means projects and assets no longer sit in isolation but seamlessly connect to ensure better asset management and higher usage and adoption rates.
There is so much more too, you can catch up with the Opening Keynote here.
With so many new and exciting things, we thought we would highlight our most anticipated new capability, so you can see how different functions will be able to instantly adopt new practices for better success.
Alyssa Champion, Marketing Manager
“The content library is going to be game-changing, Brandfolder is an incredible platform but having access to the Content Library from within Smartsheet is the perfect way to start using a DAM system and implementing a strategy for organisations who are starting from scratch. It truly demonstrates the scalability of Smartsheet and the power of Brandfolder too.”
Peter Allanach, Director
“It is quite difficult to isolate any one new capability announced at Engage that I really loved over the others however one item that I do think is going to add great extra value quickly is the improved Resource Management (RM) integration. So, we already have RM integration, but it is not that easy for project managers without licences to access resource management information.
Resource Management information will become more discoverable by project managers working directly within Smartsheet project plans with the ability to be able to see who is available or unavailable for work the project manager needs fulfilling. These insights are going to be immediately available to the project manager without necessarily needing additional licences. Yes, there will still be some licence requirements for RM however details of that will come to light in due course, but it is a fantastic capability for project managers to actively drive the resource management dimension of their project all within Smartsheet in an easy and intuitive interface. I cannot wait to get my hands on it and be able to showcase this excellent value capability to our customers.”
George Ridge, Sales Manager
“Engage 2023 provided some great insight into Smartsheet’s roadmap with plenty of new features that will make your life just that bit easier. As a sales manager I would have to say being able to analyse data through generative AI is extremely powerful and exciting. Tracking your sales performance by region has never been easier with only a couple of steps by typing into the AI Panel in a sheet: “Show sales performance by region.” Smartsheet AI will be able to generate a live chart which will integrate into a dashboard with your corporate colours and automatic updates.”
The full 3 days of the conference were jam-packed with content, talks and thought leadership from Smartsheet and their clients. The exhibition hall was filled with stalls so you got a deeper dive into the upcoming features, creating a success path for you to achieve your Smartsheet University certifications and mapping out a path for your business using Smartsheet.
More exciting news, Smartsheet are bringing EMEA customers a special edition of ENGAGE. Mark your calendars for May 14 and 15, 2024 to join us in the UK. Stay tuned — registration opens in January 2024.
You can stay up to date with all things Smartsheet, modern PPM, marketing and creative management and strategic transformation with PPS right here.