January 18, 2022 — Reflecting on my new adoption of #Smartsheet‘s Work Apps that’s included in the Advance plan, I wanted to share what Work Apps have done for me running Global PMO Partners and a recent series of solutions I implemented for a PMO client:
1. Can you imagine a day when you could actually abandon death by slide decks when it comes to overall PMO portfolio status reporting?
- From the underlying portfolio + project details, we were able to create not just a project dashboard, but a project PMO STATUS report using a dashboard. Then, just create a PMO Status Reporting Work App and add each project’s STATUS REPORT (dashboard) + at the top of the work app add the summary report of all projects that includes key metadata and quick links.
2. Ever needed a great way to pull together solution and training documentation that was organized in different ways?
- Use your dashboards to create a workspace map > add it to the Work App
- Create your End User guides & training > add it to the Work App
- One stop shop for all things your project manager needs to know and/or do > create a PM specific work app
- Use your Business Unit organization (i.e. BU dashboard + project dashboards) > add it to the overall PMO dashboard
3. For 2022 I was streamlining Global PMO’s consultant time trackers > engagement budgets > payroll.
- 1. My new addition in January – using the pivot app for time > pay which saved me several manual steps and with the run of the pivot the hours/pay is up to date and ready for me to validate & initiate on payroll weeks.
- 2. I was already using automation to trigger each consultant’s time to copy to the engagement budget sheet … and then there are the columns that copy that I don’t want on the budget sheet (since can’t select specific columns to send in a copy row workflow) that I have to be sure to delete. Since I have multiple consultants on the same project, I was finding myself opening the same engagement budget 2-3 times during my recon days. Adding each active project’s engagement budget to a Work App allows me to quickly navigate and make the adjustments (move new rows to correct week section, delete columns not applicable to client view of engagement budget).
4. And … if you’ve ever needed to a way to see all your views more holistically and easily when you need to apply changes across many areas … a Work App is a beautiful thing. The days of wondering … did I open that sheet/dashboard/report and make the change — just navigate down your list instead to see, do, move on.
So if you haven’t checked out Smartsheet’s Work Apps, put it on your 2022 New Year’s optimization resolution list! You won’t be disappointed!
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