Smartsheet’s AI tools: the 4 powerful tools with the what, how and why...

Smarter training adjusted to suit your real needs

At Smarter Business Processes we offer a wide variety of Smartsheet training courses and packages.

Our team of certified consultants provides training and remote support to clients around the globe, improving their Project Management, Workflow and Process Management.

Emma Stevens

Office Manager

Emma has 27 years of financial and customer experience and brings processes and order to our office.

Emma's customer service knowledge ensures all of our clients office enquiries are dealt with professionally, efficiently and quickly. She will leave no stone unturned to get to the bottom of a query!

When not at her desk Emma enjoys spending time with her husband and daughter as well running Brownies and Rainbows for Girlguiding UK in her local area.

Etienne Mermillod

Software Development Manager

Etienne is a seasoned ASP.NET Core Full Stack Developer. He takes great pride in building world-class applications while carefully considering the needs of its users and ease of use.

Originally from France, Etienne now calls Canada Home, where he is part of SBP Canada as a member of the API Solutions Development Team.

Etienne is a well-seasoned traveler and has visited many countries where he usually takes the path less traveled in order to backpack around and soak in the local cultures.

When not coding away, you may expect Etienne to be playing with his huge and fluffy dog Indianna or gaming away on League of Legends

David Bower

Smartsheet, Airtable and AppSheet Consultant

David is a hugely experienced Consultant, Customer Care Specialist and Client Account Manager.

In his spare time, David plays guitar, is learning to ride a motorcycle and, when it’s not too cold, can often be found tinkering in the garage. He also intends to learn to play the piano too - one day

Debbie Sawyer

Chief Smartsheet Solutions Officer (CSSO)

BSc (Hons) Computing, ITIL Foundation, Smartsheet Certified User, Aligned Sales Certified and Professional Services Certified.

Seasoned Smartsheet consultant and Training professional, Debbie’s creativity, attention to detail, willingness to deliver solutions to fully meet customer requirements and her personable manner earn her excellent client feedback.

When not working, Debbie likes to relax by spending quality time with her family. Living in the New Forest sees her taking many walks through the woods and down to the sea fronts at Lepe and Calshot. Debbie is also a keen hula hooper and has been hooping now for more than 7 years! She owns at least 10 hoops and enjoys a great workout helping her friend to run a hula hoop fitness class.

Dr James Harris

Chief Technology Officer

An experienced IT professional, James' prior work spans diverse environments from the white heat of launching information systems in one of the world's busiest airports, to industry leading tech startups. He also has extensive experience as a Finance Manager. James brings a keen insight and and flair for problem solving to every project.

Outside of work, James writes comedy, and has had many television credits over the past couple of decades on shows such as Horrible Histories and Russell Howard's Good News. He retains a burning ambition to be as funny as his wife and daughter.

Ph.D. Biochemical Physics, IT and Accounting professional.

Gwen Rymill

Communications Director

Co-founder of Smarter Business Processes, Gwen’s multi tasking roles include ensuring our clients receive the very best in customer care, while responsible for sales and marketing and partner liaison. Just don’t expect to get the cup of tea she promised you!

Away from work Gwen enjoys cycling, pilates, tap dancing and just loves baking.

Richard Rymill

CEO

Co-Founder and Lead Consultant, Richard set up SBP in response to worldwide demand from businesses wanting to implement their own Smarter Business Processes. His rapidly expanding team of experienced Smartsheet and AppSheet Consultants and Trainers share the company's values of achieving improved efficiencies and collaboration by putting people first and releasing them from unnecessary repetitive activities so they can enjoy their work again and focus on what matters to them.

When not at his desk, Richard can be found cycling, swimming and when the opportunity permits, sailing and flying.

Business Process
Automation Consultants

What are Smartsheet offering?

As part of their Enterprise Plan, users can access a suite of four AI tools: Generate Formulas, Analyze Data, Generate Text and Summaries, and Get Help.

These don’t enable you to do anything that isn’t already possible on Smartsheet, but they do simplify the method of achieving the output. In other words, they enable the user to input a written request which is then interpreted and the work – be that a formula, a written summary, a chart or the answer to your FAQ – is done for you.

In essence, these tools are time savers and will make the broader functionality of Smartsheet more accessible for non-technically minded users.

Let’s look at an example.

If you wanted to generate a formula but weren’t familiar with the type of coding this requires, you can instead tell the Generate Formulas AI tool to “find the sum of [column 1] and [column 2]”.

In addition to autocomplete options for the various columns you might want to add together, the system then creates the correct formula and applies it to the selected cells.

Or you could use the Analyze data element to create a chart, by saying “I want a chart comparing x to y” and voila, a chart appears. These examples are pretty simple but as the formulas get more complex or the data builds up for charts, it’s easy to see the value this could bring.

What Smartsheet have cleverly done is move the functionality of their help and learning community into their sheets; as they say, changing the focus from ‘how do I?’ to ‘do it for me’.

This feels very much like the start of a new era, with Smartsheet teasing some of the future capabilities that they are working towards and saying “the possibilities are endless.”

Are you saving or investing time?

Before we go, here’s some food for thought. We all know the working world is speeding up and people are getting busier. As a result, burnout is on the increase and wellbeing costs businesses time and money in itself.

If you decide, therefore, to invest in AI to save time, have you considered what you’ll do with the time you save? It’s often too easy for firms to reduce headcount or load people up with additional tasks to replace the ones they’ve automated.

Smartsheet broach this subject in their article, How generative AI will enable Smartsheet users to be even more effective, saying one of their guiding principles is to ‘empower humans to do more’. This theme of using AI to unlock human potential is important.

Consider the example set by a leading Australian software company. They leverage time saved through the use of AI and automation to allow their developers one day per year to work on any project of their choosing. This focus on innovation has led to significant improvements to their own products as developers use the time to address non-core bugs or investigate even better ways of working.

How Smarter Business Processes can help even more?

As usual, we’re here to add yet another layer of convenience for our clients. Using AI to the extent of its potential is all about knowing what commands and prompts to use and we offer training to assist with this along with what the various AI tools can do and when best to use them.

If you’re not planning to upgrade to Smartsheet’s Enterprise Plan, don’t worry, we have some amazing AI of our own.

In our own Smarter Dashboards app, there’s a ‘push button start with AI’. This allows you to not just create a chart from a prompt, but actually create a whole dashboard in seconds. It analyses your source data and generates a selection of charts for you to choose for your dashboard. You can see a demo here. Finally, don’t forget we love nothing more than creating bespoke training courses so if you’re using AI in Smartsheet and would like us to address some particular challenges, let us know.