Resource management is a strategic initiative that gives organizations the visibility they need to understand how much their business can actually accomplish with their people (resources). Without this visibility, organizations struggle to allocate their resources effectively and answer fundamental questions like:
- Who is available?
- What are people working on?
- What skills do we need to hire?
- Which teams have capacity?
Resource Management by Smartsheet connects with your project plan in Smartsheet so you can build the best team for the job, keep project tasks and budgets on track, and confidently forecast hiring needs.
And today, we are announcing a handful of new features to improve the product experience for our customers.
Undo & redo buttons
We are excited to announce new undo and redo buttons on the resourcing schedule. These buttons are one of the most relied-upon features in the software we use everyday, such as Smartsheet, Gmail and Microsoft 365 applications like Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
This new feature enables you to quickly undo scheduling changes, such as creating, removing and modifying assignments. It also means you can explore complex scheduling scenarios but easily revert back at any moment. It’s a simple, but powerful feature that has a profound impact on our productivity and the way we work.
Permission level name changes
Although this isn’t necessarily new functionality, the new permission level names in account settings make it easier to understand what each permission level can access and do in the product.
Old Names |
New Names |
Description |
|---|---|---|
| Administrator | Resourcing Administrator | Full access to the product |
| Project Manager | Portfolio Editor | Full access to all projects and people |
| Scheduler | People Scheduler | Can assign all people to all projects, but can’t edit projects |
| Team Member | Portfolio Reporter | Read-only access to all projects (including project financials) and people |
| Restricted Team Member | Portfolio Viewer | Read-only access to all project (excluding project financials) and people |
| Contractor | Contractor | Very limited access. Can view assignments, track time and input expenses for assigned projects only |
Additionally, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- The functionality behind the permission levels will not change, so if you are a Resource Management Administrator there is nothing you need to update
- You can access permissions by clicking on Account Settings > People
- As a quick reminder, only Admins can set permission levels and see the assigned permission levels for each user
Project access management
Resource Management gives customers a high-level view of their company’s resource availability, utilization and much more. To support this, project and resource managers working in the product typically have access to all the projects in their account. However, some organizations, especially large enterprises, need to segment access to projects to ensure departments or teams are only able to access certain projects.
In addition to the permission level name changes mentioned above, we are also introducing project access management. This includes a new permission level called Project Editor that restricts project managers to the projects they own or are assigned to. For example, this access control is important because if you are a marketing agency working with competing brands, you need to ensure that the project manager for brand A can’t see the project details for competing brand B and vice versa.
This is the first roll out of a broader product strategy to support the more complex information access needs of our customers.
Project owner & access filters
Before jumping into the two new filters on the schedule, we added a new Project Owner property so organizations can specify a primary contact for each project. This makes it easier for other team members to know who to go to for questions and staffing changes.
Project Owner filter: Users of the Project Portfolio, Schedule and other screens can
now filter projects by owner, making it easier to identify and update projects managed by specific people.
Project Access filter: Users of the Project Portfolio, Schedule and other screens can now filter projects based on their relationship to them, either “My Projects” (ones they are owners of or assigned to) or other projects they’re not associated with. If granted the new Project Editor permission level, they will be restricted to “My Projects” on the Project Portfolio and Project Schedule. Additionally, reports will restrict Project Editors to the projects they own.
2-way sync failure indicator
The sync status indicator message appears in the Resource Management panel when there is an issue syncing a change from Resource Management to Smartsheet or the other way around. For example, a change made in Resource Management may not be applied to a project sheet; this may be due to locked fields, project hierarchy, or dependencies. The red indicator will be displayed under the project timeline in the panel. If you are unsure how assignment syncing works or aren’t familiar with what sync actions are supported, check out this detailed help article to get caught up to speed.
Connect Control Center & Resource Management
You can now connect Control Center and Resource Management to help you work more efficiently and scale the work that matters most.
After you enable this connection, you can either automatically generate a new resource plan from scratch or connect to an existing one when you provision a new project in Control Center. You can then use the resource management panel, located in the feature bar of your project sheet to manage your resources alongside your tasks.
Smartsheet Sign in For Resource Management:
We are excited to share that you can use your Smartsheet sign in credentials to login to Resource Management by Smartsheet. One important thing to call out is that although the sign in button appears on the Resource Management login page, end users will not be able to use this login method until an RM Admin has activated Smartsheet Authentication in Account Settings. Please read the help article before activating this new feature.
If you have questions about any of the features listed above, please reach out to your Smartsheet account team. And if you are looking for a way to always stay up to date on the latest product announcements, make sure to subscribe to our release notes.
Lastly, if you have an idea for a new feature, please submit it to our product team.