From friction to flow: How intelligent, voice-powered forms make your work easier

In today’s fast-moving world, productivity often breaks down in the gap between doing the work and documenting it.

Forms are everywhere, and too often, typing into them slows things down. Typing on a phone while walking to a job site. Logging details with gloves on or special equipment in the way. Catching up on admin after a long, exhausting day. 

That friction isn’t just inconvenient. It quietly erodes data quality, delays decisions, and drains employee satisfaction. When documentation is hard, details get lost and the insights your business depends on suffer.

A smarter way to capture information

A fundamental shift is happening in how teams capture data. By moving from manual typing to intelligent, voice-powered form filling, organizations can now turn friction into flow.

Intelligent form fill combines voice transcription with AI to understand what you say and automatically map it to the right fields across the entire form. Now, Smartsheet forms work the way people naturally think and speak.

Say what happened. What you did. What comes next. The form fills itself. 

Here’s how intelligent form fill transforms you and your team's everyday work:

1. Capturing rich detail in the field

Field teams like technicians, tradespeople, and site managers operate in environments where documenting the work can be harder than completing it. Busy hands, tight schedules, and constant movement make accurate data entry a challenge.

With AI-powered form submissions, capturing details is as simple as speaking: “The root cause was a broken drain. I replaced it with part number B876,” and the AI maps your words to the right fields across the entire form.

Voice input captures rich, structured information in the moment, when details are freshest. No delays. No guesswork. Just accurate data that fuels better reporting, root-cause analysis, and faster follow-ups.

2. Inclusive, barrier-free form experiences  

High-volume form entry is essential for many roles, including compliance, intake, and reporting. But employees can face friction with language barriers, motor skill challenges, or difficulty using a traditional keyboard, mouse, or touchscreen.

Voice-powered forms remove those barriers. With speech-to-text and language identification, everyone can contribute efficiently and confidently, helping organizations work more inclusively.

The ability to speak the information...would reduce the time and effort that staff would need to click type an entry, as well as making it possible for those who have a difficult time using a mouse. - Government Agency EAP Customer

3. Turning "dead time" into productive time

Admin work has a way of piling up, especially for field workers and commuters. Timesheets, logs, and updates often turn into a stressful end-of-week scramble.

Intelligent form fill lets teams reclaim that time. Forms can be completed while walking between meetings, riding the train, or heading to the next job site. Routine documentation happens naturally, not all at once.

The result? Less burnout, better accuracy, and more time spent on meaningful work.

This feature helps me the most when the team and I are trying to submit our weekly project hours while I am on the move (commuting). - Enterprise EAP Customer

The future of forms is conversational

Intelligent form fill isn’t just faster, it’s more human.

By bridging the gap between thought and documentation with AI, voice-powered forms improve data quality, boost mobility, and remove friction from everyday workflows – all processed securely with industry-standard encryption. Your hands stay free. Your work stays moving. And your data gets better.

Try filling out a Smartsheet form with your voice today… and if you like it, share with your team!

Learn how to set up intelligent form fill.

All voice data is processed securely with industry-standard encryption, ensuring voice data maintains full compliance with the frameworks supported by Smartsheet. No inputs are used to train third-party foundational AI models.