Important Details - Please Review

Using Smartsheet does not always mean you need a Smartsheet license.  This document is created to help you evaluate whether you require a license that cost money per licensed user per year, or if you can work with a licensed co-worker to modify any document field. We strongly encourage that you review this article before requesting a full license. Free alternatives to spreadsheet collaboration can be performed using Excel online and/or storing and sharing documents by using One Drive.  Manager approval is required for all requests for a license, and quarterly review of usage is performed by BTech to optimize this valuable tool and save our shareholders money.

There are two user types in Smartsheet:

• A licensed user is a paid user who can create new items in Smartsheet including sheets, reports, and dashboards, and share them with others.

• A free user is someone who does not have a paid Smartsheet license. Free users can view and/or edit the items they have been shared to, but they do not have the ability to create their own items without a license.
  • Free users can include unlicensed users, as well as external stakeholders, including customers, vendors, and partners.

Your user type designates what you can and cannot do with your Smartsheet account.

NOTE: Your user type is NOT related to the access you have in sheets. Your sharing permission level (Viewer, Editor, or Admin) designates what you can and can't do within a sheet and may vary from sheet to sheet. This is set by the owner of the sheet.

For more information about sharing permission levels, see Sharing Permission Levels.

Group Admin

Group Admins can create and manage groups based on contacts in their Smartsheet Contact List. Anyone on the account can share and send information to the groups created by the Admin.

(for more on groups see: Create and Manage Smartsheet Contact Groups)

(see the Contact List article for more info)

Resource Viewer

Resource Viewers can track everyone in the account's allocation percentage across all sheets. A Resource Viewer needs to have a user license under a Business or Enterprise account. 

(More information on this feature is available in the Resource Views help article.)

While a license is required to become a Resource Viewer, everyone on the account (both licensed and unlicensed users) can be tracked as a resource by the Resource Viewer.

Licensed User

Capabilities that involve creating, owning, administering, or driving a process, program, or project in Smartsheet require a paid license. For example, a license is required to do the following:

• Create and own sheets and templates (the number of sheets that you can create and will depend on your plan type)
• Create, own, and manage reports
• Create workspaces
• Publish sheets, reports, and dashboards
• Insert and delete columns*
• Change column properties*
• Hide/unhide columns*
• Create and modify forms*
• Lock columns and rows*
• Create and edit update requests, automated actions, and workflows
• Create sheet-level reminders, and row reminders for other users
• Request backups of sheets
• Obtain Resource Viewer or Group Admin access on a Enterprise or Business account
• View Activity Log
• Create, delete and edit shared filters
• Create conditional formatting rules
• Send rows
• Edit project settings

* These activities require Owner- or Admin-level sharing permissions to the sheet.

Free users (Unlicensed Users and Free Collaborators) are important participants in collaborating on the work you manage in Smartsheet. Free users can view, edit, and update sheets and reports within the platform. (Creating, owning, administering, or driving a process, program, or project in Smartsheet requires a paid license.)

If a free user is shared to a sheet as an Admin, they won't be able to create and manage forms on the sheet or insert, rename, delete, hide/unhide, move or change the properties of columns. These features are only available to the sheet owner and licensed users with Admin sharing permissions.

For a full list of permissions available to licensed users, see the Licensed User section above.

Unlicensed User

Unlicensed users are part of a Business or Enterprise account but cannot create or own sheets. An unlicensed user doesn't count against the user limit of the account.

• Resource Viewers can track tasks assigned to these users, and System Admins can manage their accounts as described above. Unlicensed users can access shared sheets as Viewers (read-only), Editors (edit cell data), or Admins (manage the sheet), and can even re-share them depending on the sharing access level they were assigned.

Free Collaborator

Free collaborators can be shared on any number of sheets, but they can't create their own. They can access shared sheets as Viewers (read-only), Editors (edit cell data), or Admins (manage the sheet), and can even re-share them depending on the sharing access level they were assigned.