3 Ways to Manage Client Projects in SmartSuite (Agency, Virtual Assistant, and Contractor Examples)

If you are someone that works with clients, you probably know that the project management of all of the things you need to do for a client is one of the more complicated parts of your life. And if you're shopping around for work management software, I think seeing example projects and how they are managed inside that software can be a really helpful way for you to assess, hey, could this tool be the right fit for me? So in this video I want to take you inside of the software called Split SmartSuite and show you what it might look like to manage a project inside of its flexible data and task mixed interface. What we're going to be going through, as you can see on the screen right here, are three different project setups, three different options. We'll have the complicated, the simple, and what I would consider the Goldilocks. In between, I'll be showing you what these projects might look like. For each example use case and I'll be diving deep on the Goldilocks solution to show you some details of how particular fields and settings can help us make our projects a bit easier. Now, before we get started, I want to remind you that we do have our affiliate link in the description below if you'd like to try out SmartSuite for yourself and follow along. And of course, thank you SmartSuite for sponsoring this video. With that though, let's go into our first project example, which is what I'm calling Project per Solution. So here's what this looks like inside SmartSuite's interface. We've got this solution up here called John's House. And if I go inside this John's House solution, I I can see all of the information and tasks I need to manage the renovation in this case of John's House. For this particular solution, I am using the case study or example industry of a contracting business. So what we're going to be seeing in this example is what you might need to be a renovation contractor or a remodeler. But keep in mind that the same principles will apply regardless of your industry. If you have a project, it's going to be very similar. Inside this John's House solution, we've got our first app, our first database outlining the remodel plan, the breakdown of budget, actual budget variance, and the actual things we need to do to bring each of these areas to life. This is kind of our main action area where we're managing the moving parts of the project. Regardless of your industry, this would likely be where you would track either your deliverables or your major project phases. Inside this area you can see we have sub activities for the action items, the checklists, and we also have relationships down here to our other data that we've tracked inside this solution. Speaking of that, let me actually show you some of these other apps. This remodel plan is connecting out and linking to these three other information based apps. The contractor and vendors app is showing us almost like like a CRM or a client relationship management or contact relationship management. What this is breaking out here are all of the different people we need to work with or keep track of related to this project. For anyone who's working with trades or subcontractors you can imagine this would be a nice way to keep track of all of the details like who is our contractor for electrical on this project, who is our contact for, you know, zoning on this project. These are the kinds of things we can track in inside this basically Rolodex. In this app, to the right of the contact area we have quotes. Now this one is a little bit of a contractor specific use case, but what this is allowing us to do is to collect different quotes from multiple contractors on each part of the project and collect them all in one central database. This isn't as common in other industries, but think about your home renovation when you're trying to get three different quotes for drywallers to get the best possible quote. That's kind of what this view is doing here because this is breaking down things in its own separate database. We can connect this back to things like the remodel plan, but it's not going to clutter up our actual remodel plan to collect all of these quotes. And because it's built into SmartSuite, we don't have to link out to a ton of other spreadsheets or emails that we have to keep track of. It's all centralized for this John's House project. Finally, to the far right, we have an inspiration area inside of Smart SmartSuite where we've got different images, maybe some pinterest things from the client, breaking down what we want the final look to be. Despite the fact that this person clearly has some very conflicting aesthetics. What this inspiration area allows us to do is have one client ready view that we could whip up on the screen if we were meeting with a client in person or virtually, and have almost a nice client portal experience in that live or call based engagement. Overall though, this project per solution setup allows us to have really expansive areas to break down types of data and allows us to focus in on just one project at A time with no additional settings needed to be modified. I would say this is going to be the most appropriate setup for folks who are working with what I would call whale projects, meaning very, very large expansive projects with many, many moving pieces. So perhaps if you are a new construction developer, you've got all that stuff you need to track. It's all all very separate. By all means, this could be a good fit. For another example, maybe you're an employee or a freelancer with just one or two major clients. Maybe it would be appropriate for you to have a whole solution for those huge sized projects. But for many people, I do think this project per solution setup might be overkill for typical projects that span from 20 to 100 hours and aren't nearly as expansive as, say, building a house from scratch. So that brings me to the opposite extreme. I want to show you a simple second example of what it could look like to organize a project in SmartSuite by going a little bit lower on the hierarchy over to the right. Here I have a project per record solution, which is kind of a mouthful, but really it just means inside this solution I would have a list of all of my projects, where my projects themselves are simply records. If I were to actually have this inside my account, I would most likely call this solution something like Click Client Work. Inside this record, I would have just one app. I could leave it as the default naming. Or maybe I would just call it Current Projects, something like that. And inside this area I would have one record equaling one project. And that is all I would have. It would be as simple as it could get. And to actually track the things I needed to do, I would use a checklist field inside of SmartSuite where I can break out the tasks, the due dates, and the assignees for each thing I need to do. This structure of having just one simple record per gig, and all information about that gig or that job is just tracked on the record itself. I think this is a really great approach for most simpler projects. So whether your project is to deliver a product, a productized service, a custom service that's very quick, I think this kind of layout is going to be very popular for folks who are virtual assistants, musicians, freelancers, ad hoc consultants, folks that are working on things that are pretty quick and not that complex to manage will likely find this to be a really nice option. Just like in the other examples, though, we've got all the same project management features we might need. We're just keeping them all tucked inside one comprehensive record. While we could continue to add fields, just like we had in the more complicated example, for things like, you know, inspiration images and so on. We don't need to. And I think keeping things as simple as you can can be a real benefit of this approach. And just like our other views, we do have the ability to have things assigned out, both at the overall project level and also at the project checklist level. And these things, each of these pieces, both the overall project and these moving pieces here, will still show up inside of my work. My overview of assignments at the start or end each day, whenever I look at it, to allow me to make sure the project keeps moving forward. But by keeping it so simple, I have a smaller learning curve for my team. And, you know, I don't know, there's just this kind of calm that comes to going into this area and just seeing, Yep, here's my stuff. I don't need to go into any other places, don't need to click on any relational fields. It's all right here. So that brings us to our third layout for how to manage a project inside SmartSuite's hierarchy, which is to use linked records and basically combine the best of both of the other two options. If I go inside this area here, we are going to be inside our project with link record solution. If this was actually my area, I'd probably just call it something like client work. And on the far left of this area, we basically replicate what we had in our last layout, where each record represents one client engagement or one project or one deliverable. For this particular example, I'm using a marketing agency example. So that's why you'll see some of the terms here are a little bit marketing focused, but the same layout again will apply to just about any project you're managing. Much like our other areas, if I go inside one of these projects, you'll see that I do have custom field types being added here that allow me to track different information about a project, such as when someone's signed the approval, what the project type is. All of these are just fields, just like we saw elsewhere. But what makes this area unique and this layout unique is that I'm using extensive linked records for this whole layout to work, rather than having all of my tasks for a project as a checklist. Actually, let me show you that. So right here I've got a checklist of things, but the only checklist items I have on the project itself are the project management tasks, all of the actual deliverables and creation things I need to do. These are being tracked Separately and connected through linked records. That's why this is kind of a Goldilocks because it's combining the best of both of the two solutions we saw before. What this is doing is connecting deliverables I'm tracking in another database with the overall project I have here. Let me show you what that other database looks like so you can see why this connection is powerful. Over here in the deliverables app, I have different fields that are unique just to the deliverables I'm tracking. I've got task type statuses that really are tailor made for the creation of deliverables. I have due dates, assignees and straight up task management features here. If I go inside these deliverables, I've added a bunch of features fields here that allow me to track information that is specifically helpful for the content creation or deliverable creation process. So if I just collapse this one, you can go down here and see I've got my project guidelines outlined, the colors we need to use. I've got the type of task, I've got the client it is connected to, whoever I'm working for on that particular one and I can track additional subtasks or sub deliverables if I scroll up a little bit inside this task. In my proofs and edits area, I've even added fields that allow me to track the revision and improvement of a given piece of content. So here I have a voting field that I'm actually repurposing to be number of internal proofreads. So every time someone proofreads this piece of content that we're getting ready to share with a client, they can just click plus here and it'll add up each person's tracking over time. So for example, here you can see that I've just tracked mine. In addition to deliverables and client projects that are networked together with those linked fields, we've also have a CRM inside this area which again is kind of like our first example. In this CRM we're tracking information about the company themselves. So if we open a record on this CRM area, we can see that there are fields specific to just CRM style information. So the client location, the client company size, their logo, description of the company, projects that are being worked on that are related to it. Here we can use this CRM to track some evergreen information about each client we serve. For example, one client, maybe they prefer to get Things via email versus a text message. Another client prefers WhatsApp, another client always likes their stuff to be in dark mode. We can track this kind of evergreen information in this CRM area and connect it with relate it to any given project we might have. For example, if I go back to the project area and I go inside this project for Revel Brands, go under General Information, I can see that this project is related to Revel Brands and that's how I can keep track of the connection between these two different databases. Also, little fun fact here if you didn't notice this already. I have got this whole thing set up here so that the title of the project automatically shows me the client name as well as just an additional safeguard that's actually done up in here in the modify field settings where I've auto generated this task name or record name by having the client name, a bar, project type and then the record ID using these dynamic fields. So I'm actually not typing any of these field titles. They are dynamically coming in based on the information I have on the linked record field and other things. So you see how that just changed. Pretty cool stuff. Just wanted to highlight that geeky detail. So why exactly is this the Goldilocks solution for project management in SmartSuite? Well, in our first example if we had one solution per project, we're going to be constantly creating new projects. If we had a higher volume business and when you're constantly creating new solutions that can become a little confusing for your team, they might add a particular project to their starred favorites area. But then when that project ends all of a sudden that view is a dead link and they need to re add the new project as a new favorite. They just have to constantly be looking in new places. Versus with this particular layout we're leveraging the really strong Linked records feature in SmartSuite and we always know there's one place to go for all client work. I don't have to check five different solutions. I've got it all right here. The second benefit of this particular approach is that we have these different databases. So just like our first example, we have the ability to have our fields be perfectly customized to the needs of our given workflow or given database. The third advantage of this kind of layout is the fact that we have things centralized. So if we want to set up automations or integrations, we only have to set it up one time. For example, maybe we want to automate something based on how much time is tracked or whether or not things are ready for approval. Maybe we wanted to have an email go to our client whenever something is ready for review. Well, if we do that where we want to have things be automated when an approval is ready and we want to send that email to our client with all that dynamic information, it would be great to be able to set that up one time for all clients and know that it's going to send and not have to set it up for 5, 10, 15 different solutions. And really, that same kind of rule of thumb goes for all of the elements in here. Maybe you have certain settings where you only want certain people on your team to be able to be a project manager. Like, for example, they need to be on the team of operations in order to be the project manager. Wouldn't it be great to set that setting once and not have to adjust it in all of these other solutions for all settings, whether it's an automation or a field setting, or spotlighting things that are overdue, this is the kind of stuff that can be a little bit faster to set up and to update all at once if you have fewer solutions and more power baked into each one. So so those are the three most common ways I've seen people organize their projects for clients inside of SmartSuite. By no means are these the only options, but they're the most popular three I've seen so far. But before we wrap up today and say, all right, case closed, that's project management with clients, I do want to address this question that came in from Nigel earlier this month about how exactly you can use these kinds of setups to also work with your clients inside of SmartSuite. So just briefly here at the end, I'm going to do a quick mini tutorial about the ways you can use these setups to actually work with clients. So to go back out at the overview level here, let's talk about how to use SmartSuite with your clients. The first option for using SmartSuite with your clients, which would be best suited for this project per solution style setup, would be to use something like a share view. Basically, you're taking whatever you're seeing on the screen right now and sharing it in a shareable and embeddable link with your client. You would then take this link and send it to them via WhatsApp or via email, and they could then open it and see whatever it is you've chosen to show in that particular view. That's your first option for coordinating with clients, is to give them a shared view of one app or multiple apps and share that with them. The second option for working with your clients in SmartSuite, which could work for just about any of the options that you have Here is to actually invite your clients into SmartSuite as a guest user. Guests inside SmartSuite are free view only, but they do have commenter permissions and you can find more on this help doc here. Basically you want to invite your client into SmartSuite so they have to log in, but once logged in you can allow them to interact with you on given items by giving them that access. If you do decide to have your client inside of your SmartSuite account, it would probably be a good practice to make sure that you're restricting their access to just the things they need and perhaps give them their own special view dashboard or something else to help them focus down so they're not seeing all of the overwhelm that SmartSuite might offer. Generally, clients want to just see the things they truly need to know, so make sure you tailor your view to their preferences and even have a conversation with them during kickoff so they know how to get into that account and what exactly they should be looking for. The third way to work with clients in SmartSuite is to actually keep the clients outside of SmartSuite, but give them a way of submitting information very conveniently. One way of doing so might be to have a view that is a form view that you can create inside the account here and then drag fields into this form to allow them to create records inside your account, such as you could have them fill in the specs for a project they want and have that generate a record inside your deliverables area. Just keep in mind that forms inside of SmartSuite, even though they are super powerful and allow you to use things like linked records and so on, they are limited in so much that they only allow you to create new records at this time. There is some talk of this changing pretty soon and eventually you'll be able to update existing records, but that's not yet released at the time of recording. However, I think even today we can safely say that Forms would be one way for you to have your client interact inside the account without having them go through that additional friction of having to log in and do all that stuff. Forms would be our third option now, our fourth option for client collaboration kind of 4 and 5. They both also have the client stay outside of SmartSuite but leverage SmartSuite's features to make it easier. Both of these features rely on us using our email, so I'm going to group them together for the sake of example here. The first email based method of working with our clients in SmartSuite will be to utilize The Share by Email feature, which is pretty unique to SmartSuite. If I click on Share by Email, I have the opportunity to send information to say my client and give them a PDF of whatever is currently in that given record. So this could be the deliverable, this could be the contract, this could be whatever and I can write a custom message and have it send from email to have them actually review the information included. Notice if they had access to SmartSuite as well, I could just send them the link, but assuming they're outside of the system, the file attachment method is going to give them a view only copy as of that moment in time. This is great for folks who prefer email or don't want to log into your system but still need to get periodic updates about given things. Notice that I'm able to customize this email for the share record as I go. So these can be completely personalized messages to just the client you're looking to send it to. You can also if you wanted to send it to members here as well. That's option for email number one. The second option for email to communicate with clients is actually to use automation. So in this particular automation we say whenever certain conditions are met, go ahead and send an email to whoever we want to send it to letting them know that we are ready for revisions or review for a given deliverable. Here I'm using these kind of dynamic fields provided by SmartSuite from the triggering task to fill in the blanks and have this same email swap out dynamic content for the given person I'm looking to talk to. You'd probably want this to send to the client, not just the revisions person as I have in this dummy example. But one thing that's really great about this is that it's allowing me to pull in both related information and direct field information and have it all come into this given task. I can also choose to add attachments or field comparisons here, which is really cool. And perhaps most importantly for teams with client facing work, I can even send off internal notifications to let certain folks know that hey, this has been sent to the client. How many times have we all sent something to the client and forgot to tell our teammates and they keep editing it? Maybe that's just me, but this is a really nice add on here. And the other additional step here is just tracking that date sent. But that would be a second way we could use email to communicate with our clients where we're sending automated or manual digests or reports about stuff in SmartSuite. The client then has the convenience of just responding in email, their preferred modality, and our account manager can then either automatically or manually track that information inside of SmartSuite to note what is or isn't approved. Now last but not least, I want to also share that when it comes to clients and SmartSuite, there is going to be a really big change coming soon. But unfortunately it's not here by the time I'm recording this video. But SmartSuite is adding functionality for both native client portals and integrated client portals as of just a few days ago here. So if anyone is looking out for a fully featured client portal solution beyond the ones I've just shared here, just know it might already be out by the time you're watching this video. But it is definitely coming Quite soon to SmartSuite as it seems like that team is really focused on this kind of service provider use case, which is cool to see. So Nigel, I hope that answers your question. Thanks for asking. And if you guys have questions in the chat like Nigel did, go ahead and drop them in the comments below this video. If you'd like to try out SmartSuite and play around with some of the features I demoed in this video, go ahead and use our affiliate link below. And otherwise, I think this wraps up a a rather long video about all the different ways to manage your projects in SmartSuite. If you'd like more videos about the details of the project management features in SmartSuite, just write PM in the comments below. That'll let me know. Kind of digitally voting to create more videos about this topic, but otherwise please like and subscribe. Thank you so much and until next time, enjoy the process.