Is SmartSuite Worth it? 8 Hidden Features that Add TONS of Value

Compared to other software out there, SmartSuite is one of the least intimidating work management platforms I have ever experienced or trialed. True story. I mean just look at the website right? Like not one of these people are less than a nine out of ten. They're just such happy little stock art people. But given how my journey as someone who's going from a ClickUp power user to really trying to master SmartSuite, I have SmartSuite and this video. I want to dedicate all to those features. The AC if you just look at the cute overall interface. So if you want to follow along with this tutorial, be sure to use the affiliate link for SmartSuite below. And say thank you to SmartSuite for sponsoring this video while you're at it. But with suite are built into various positions throughout the interface, but the most prominent is the use any existing piece of data, clicking add section and giving this a increase our load time on a given task and also just make things look nicer than what we and I think that's a really unappreciated or unacknowledged feature that is just really really cool. The second feature I want to highlight is that SmartSuite, unlike many other tools, has a voting option. This is a type of field that allows you to have people vote on a particular topic inside your interface. As far as I know right now this is only focused on internal users, but maybe eventually it'll have it for everybody. But this is a feature that I've seen people request in many different pieces of software and not many tools out there actually have this or do this well. So so the second standout feature here is the voting field type. Up next, our third feature that's kind of hidden here is up at the solution level itself. This is kind of like the container for a whole section of your SmartSuite account. If we go into this overall solution, I want to highlight here the Solution guide. This is a document, a smart doc basically that is built into every single solution that allows you to add information about the solution itself. In some of their templates they actually demonstrate how to use this really beautifully where they'll explain the purpose, the meaning, the terms, whatever you need to know about using this area of SmartSuite, it can all be documented into this pre built ready made solution guide for folks who are taking documentation of your business seriously or just process geeks like me. This is one of those kind of hidden built in features that is just really really. Now that brings us to the fourth hidden feature. The fourth hidden feature is found inside the actual fields themselves. And for this one I'm actually going to go inside the Type field, click on Modify Field Settings and show you exactly what I mean. The standout feature here is found under the Defaults tab that exists inside just about every field. In here we are able to say hey, by default when I create a new record, always have it have this value. This will apply to all new records. And what's so cool about this is this does not require to use up an automation. This does not require manual work each time. This ensures that it's truly a no brainer. Whenever we create a record, it'll automatically go into either that status, that field, that value that we can set for every field on here. For anyone who gets tired of data entry and wants just everything to start at low priority or whatever else you want to add, let's this is one of those little subtle features that you might not otherwise notice that definitely deserves some attention and appreciation. Now my fifth hidden feature here is actually right near the one that we just talked about, so let's just cover this while we're here. That's referring to this guy. This looks as if clicking it will just allow you to expand and see all of your options in a bigger view, which it does. But what you don't know from the onset is that there's also this stuff stuff going on. What? What's this? This gives us the option to include descriptions for each value, to give a number value to each thing, and to even leverage predefined lists such as age ranges or countries or continents or whatever else it is that we want to add in here we can have these pre filled. Has anyone here ever had to create a dropdown field on some piece of software or on a spreadsheet where you found yourself having to retype all the different continents or all the different ages or all the different genders and so on. Exactly. I can't tell you how many times I've had to write months of the year and drop down fields in some way, shape or form. In SmartSuite, this hidden feature allows you to bypass all of that manual work. We could have pre defined lists pre populated and save us all that data entry. If I import this list here, you'll see what happens. It gets added right into the fields I have and if I wanted to I could go ahead and add some descriptions, add some values to each of these if I wanted to. That this whole bundle of really feels like a bunch of hidden features, but this is one that I definitely would not want to miss if I were you and setting up a more complicated workflow inside of SmartSuite. All right, so I've probably geeked out about field types enough considering they've gotten a few shout outs here. Our next section we're going to talk about is profiles. Profiles are a collection of people focused resources that are built directly into the SmartSuite interface. You can find your profile by clicking on this little guy over here and looking at my profile. You can also find this for other people by clicking on their pretty little faces. The profile features of SmartSuite also allow you to add somebody to a department, a team, a member type, and so on. And a lot of this information can be used and accessed by other folks in the interface. Other people will be able to see your hobbies, your about your skills, your birthday. That information would be accessible, accessible to your collaborators. When I go in to edit this information, I'm able to add a lot of information about myself and ensure that all my virtual or in person collaborators can find this information about me without me having to recommunicate it or create some kind of manual directory inside the databases itself. Now, related to the profiles, but just outside it is also the availability status, which I feel like goes hand in hand. It kind of seems like they would be in the same spot. But availability status is just related to this in that I'm able to set certain statuses for myself, such as perhaps this week I'm going to be on vacation out of office. Then I could add this status in here and have this show up throughout the interface based on my availability status. That's actually not the case because clearly I am here. But you're able to see that availability status here and make sure that other team members can see it as well. That's all built in thanks to this kind of profile people management suite. Anyone can see this information by clicking on People's profile or going into the member directory that's built around this feature where I can see who's here, what's their information, and click on their profile to see more information, including hey, that I'm supposed to be on vacation. What's happening here? The next hidden feature I want to highlight isn't really a traditional feature at all, but it's so impactful that I want to include it here nonetheless. And this is that SmartSuite, much like other tools we're seeing in the space, has adopted a public roadmap and feedback system using Canny. And if we actually go over to SmartSuite, canny IO, you can see kind of what they got going on here. Here anyone can log in and submit requests for what they'd like to see the product do. And SmartSuite in turn, is responding to these kind of requests, giving us feedback and including information, even here directly from the CEO about what they're going to be building in the platform next. For anyone who's followed this channel for a minute, know, transparency and communication is something that I really value in the software that we review here and that we use personally at ProcessDriven. So seeing a transparent feedback system here and watching things actually, you know, get knocked out after they are submitted by a user, that is awesome stuff. So for anybody who's looking to have, you know, their vote cast and really heard by, directly by the CEO and by others inside the SmartSuite team, this candy board, I feel like is almost a feature in its own sense, because you can see what's happening, vote for things, and watch as the things that you want to see happen actually come into fruition in the platform. Now, last but not least, we are at our eighth feature, the hidden EST feature that SmartSuite has. The eighth thing that you need in order to be successful with SmartSuite, and it's, you know, it's this YouTube channel. Okay, no, that's a terrible eighth one. We won't do that. But the eighth one I would say that we do need to highlight here is the actual community that SmartSuite provides. Unlike other software out there, SmartSuite has chosen to go off of the Facebook. Can I call it Facebook Hell? I'm just going to call it that because that's what I view it to be inside their community. One of the areas that I found really helpful in creating this video is their Pro tip section. And we'll include this link in the description below the video as well, if you want to check it out. But here you can see a bunch of pro tips that are created by the folks at SmartSuite. Thank you, Nate. Who are highlighting different ways to make your SmartSuite experience more efficient, effective, and, you know, include these kind of pro tips, just like you saw in this video here. So that would be my eighth highlight feature. Not really core to the product itself, but more to the ecosystem around it. And I don't think we can underestimate the value of that ecosystem to help us do things more efficiently and not have to learn things the hard way. Speaking of which, is actually what this video is here for as well. If this is helpful to you, please do like and subscribe so you see more videos like this for our take on things. And if you want to try SmartSuite for yourself and check out the affiliate link in the description below, where we also have all the other links mentioned in this video. Thanks so much to SmartSuite for sponsoring this video guys. We'll be back on Friday with our next video, so be sure to subscribe so you don't miss it. Thanks so much for watching and until next time, enjoy the process.