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SmartSuite Quickstart Guide
SmartSuite Quickstart Guide
Emma Montgomery avatar
Written by Emma Montgomery
Updated over a week ago

Where to Begin

SmartSuite's user-friendly and robust platform provides the versatility to construct personalized solutions and streamline work processes. This article serves as a top-level overview of the key structure and features of SmartSuite, accompanied by links to access further documentation for each aspect.


SmartSuite Structure:

Workspaces

Workspaces hold a collection of Solutions - those colorful blocks on your home page. You can have multiple workspaces each with its own plan type.

Solutions

Solutions help you manage a project, process, or workflow in your business. Solutions serve as a centralized repository for all relevant information pertaining to a project or workflow, similar to a folder containing multiple files. The features available within a Base depend on the user's plan type.

Apps

Every Solution is organized into Apps: distinct groups and collections of information/data used in your specific workflow. Apps include information with shared fields of data - think of them as tabs on your spreadsheet.

Records

Records (or rows) represent individual and distinct items in your Apps. Think of them as a row in a spreadsheet. Records can be anything from tasks and items to people and projects to name a few.

Fields

Records hold a set of values called fields (or columns). Fields store specific and detailed information related to your workflow and provide the ability to sort, manage, and analyze it efficiently. They are the columns in your App, each representing a different variable for a record.

SmartSuite offers over 40 field types to capture any form of information while enhancing and validating your data.

Views

Views allow you to view the same information from different perspectives, unique to each App in your Solution. With views, you can choose to display only specific fields or records and make other customizations to manage the information in that view. This enables team members to have a comprehensive understanding of the data, whether they are using Grid View or other view types such as Form View, Kanban View, Calendar View, Card View, Map View, Chart View, Timeline View, or Dashboards.


Onboarding Your Team

Members

Members are what SmartSuite calls individual users of a particular SmartSuite workspace. Upon their invitation, members are assigned a role - either Account Administrator, Solution Creator, General Access, or Guest.

Permissions

SmartSuite members can have defined permissions determining their editing and viewing access to a Solution, App, or Field. These granular permissions play a crucial role in successful team collaboration, allowing you to control who can modify the information in your bases.

Member Profile

Member Profiles are tied to individual users. Your Member Profile is linked to one or more SmartSuite Workspaces that represent an individual subscription to SmartSuite, each with its own environment.

If you are the Admin of the account, your Member profile dropdown gives you easy access to manage your Workspace settings and billing information, as well as inviting new or managing existing Members and Teams.

Billing

Your SmartSuite Plan determines the set of features and workspace limits you have. We offer three paid plan levels to meet the needs of various teams and organizations: Team, Professional, and Enterprise.


SmartSuite Quickstart

Start with a Template

You can always choose to create brand new Solutions from scratch, but we offer a full Solution Library of pre-built templates that make it easy to jump start your processes.

We recommend starting with a template. Simply click + on the home page and choose Start with a Template to open the Solution Library. Search or browse solutions by Category, and click into any template to see a live, interactive preview of the solution.

Just click "Use Template" when you hover over a template card and the solution will instantly be added to your Workspace.

Customize Your Template

SmartSuite is built on a first principle belief: No two businesses are exactly alike. That's why we make it easy to quickly tailor templates to fit your needs.

As a Workspace Administrator or Solution Manager, you can easily Add or Modify Fields in an app.

Consider the Hiring template, which has a number of unique values in the Status field. Perhaps you want to flag a job Applicant as someone to consider for a future position. From the Edit Record view, click the Status field "..." menu and select Modify Field Settings. From there, you can add a new status value for "Consider for Future Positions" and track candidates for future roles.

Add Your Data, Members & Teams

Create new records by clicking the โž•New Record button in the upper right within any app. You can also import data from a CSV or Excel file to jump-start your workflows.

Fill out your Member Profile to tell your team members a little about you, your bio, interests, skills, hobbies, social media handles and more.

Invite Team Members to join SmartSuite - just add their email addresses and indication their role.

Creating Teams in SmartSuite and add Members you've invited to one or many teams. Teams make it easy to manage Permissions to solutions and power workflows with Automations.

Create Views

Now that you've added data and team members to your Workspace, you're ready to start building views.

Every App has a common View dropdown in the upper left for Public and Private reports. Every View is based on a View Type - Form View, Kanban View, Calendar View, Card View, Map View, Chart View, Timeline View, or Dashboards.

All Views share a common Report Toolbar that allows you to select Fields to Display in a View, Sort, Group, Filter, and more.

Assign Work

SmartSuite makes it easy to assign work to members. Everyone can see who owns what, providing more transparency and relevance to your daily work. Use the Assigned To field to assign records to a team member. The person assigned will receive a notification letting them know they have a new task to tackle.

Collaborate with Your Team

With SmartSuite, you can collaborate directly where the work is.

The Notification Center in SmartSuite is the primary location for checking updates and work items. Members receive notifications for various reasons such as @mentions, record updates, profile updates, password changes, and assignments. Notifications appear in real-time, grouped in tabs like All, Unread, @mentioned, and Assigned to Me.

My Work

My Work is your personal command center, a top-level view of all your tasks across the system with important information like due dates and priorities displayed in a concise format. Sort tasks by date, priority or solution to focus on the things that you need to get done.

Automate & Integrate

Automations

Automations let you eliminate repetitive tasks from your work, offering a reliable and consistent way to streamline your processes.

Integrations

Explore ways to integrate with external systems and data.

Learn more about integrations >

SmartSuite API

The REST API provides an easy way to integrate your SmartSuite Solutions with any external system.


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