AI Features: Smart Assist, Smart Agents & Smart Columns

Smartsheet's AI Strategy

Smartsheet went private in January 2025 in an $8.4 billion deal led by Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners. Free from quarterly earnings pressure, the company is executing an aggressive AI integration across the entire platform. More than a third of dashboard elements are now AI-generated, and the company reports that formula support inquiries dropped ~50% since the AI formula generator launched.

This lesson separates what is production-ready today from what is in preview — an important distinction before you build critical processes on these features.

What's Live Today (Generally Available)

AI Formula Generator

The most immediately useful AI feature in Smartsheet.

Access: Click the sparkle icon in the formula bar → Generate Formula, or AI Tools panel → Generate Formulas.

How it works: Describe what you want in plain language. The AI understands your sheet's column names and types.

Real examples:

• "Count rows where status is blocked and priority is high" → =COUNTIFS([Status]:[Status], "Blocked", [Priority]:[Priority], "High")
• "Calculate business days until due date" → =NETWORKDAYS(TODAY(), [Due Date]@row)
• "Show the average score for only Engineering team members" → =AVGIFS([Score]:[Score], [Team]:[Team], "Engineering")
• "Flag rows where budget is over 20% above estimate" → =IF([Actual]@row > [Budget]@row * 1.2, "Over Budget", "OK")

The formula generator works best when: your column names are descriptive, you have consistent column types, and you can clearly articulate the desired logic in one sentence.

Generate Text and Summaries

AI can generate or summarize text within cells.

Access: Select a cell → AI Tools → Generate Text (or right-click → AI Actions).

Use cases:

• Summarize project status from a description column ("Write a 2-sentence executive summary of this project description")
• Draft update email text based on row data ("Write a stakeholder update email about this milestone")
• Generate descriptions from structured fields ("Create a detailed task description based on the Title, Category, and Acceptance Criteria columns")

The AI references your sheet's column names and cell values for context-aware output.

Intelligent Form Fill

When Smartsheet forms are submitted by authenticated users, AI can map pasted text or voice input to form fields automatically.

Example: Paste meeting notes into the form's open text area. The AI extracts the project name, due date, assigned person, and description into the correct form fields — eliminating manual field-by-field entry.

AI-Powered Chart Generation

Describe the chart you want in natural language, and Smartsheet generates it from your sheet data.

"Show me a bar chart of budget by department, sorted largest to smallest" → creates the visualization and adds it to the dashboard builder.

Coming in 2026 (Early Adopter Program / Preview)

Smart Assist

An AI companion and gateway into Smartsheet. The key capability: scaffolding entire projects from text outlines.

Example workflow:

1. Open Smart Assist
2. Type: "I need a product launch tracker with phases, tasks, owners, and budget tracking"
3. Smart Assist creates: the sheet structure, column types, sample hierarchy (phases and tasks), suggested automations, and a starter dashboard

You review and customize. The AI does the initial build.

Smart Assist also answers questions in natural language:

• "Which tasks are overdue?"
• "What's the total budget for the Engineering phase?"
• "Who owns the most at-risk tasks?"

And activates automations through conversation:

• "Set up a weekly reminder for all incomplete tasks assigned to Sarah"

Smart Columns

AI-powered column types that continuously process data in every row.

The concept: You define a Smart Column's purpose once. Smartsheet automatically populates it for every new row and updates it when source data changes.

Examples:

• Sentiment Smart Column on a customer feedback sheet: automatically classifies each row as Positive, Neutral, or Negative based on the comment text
• Category Smart Column on a support intake sheet: auto-tags tickets based on description content ("Password Reset", "Billing Issue", "Technical Bug")
• Summary Smart Column: generates a one-sentence summary of long description fields
• Translation Smart Column: translates content into a target language for multilingual teams

Smart Columns operate continuously — new rows added via form, API, or manual entry are processed automatically.

Smart Flows

Natural language automation builder. Describe complex multi-step workflows in plain language; Smart Flows builds the entire automation chain.

Example input: "When a new row is added with Priority = High, assign it to the on-call person in the Roster sheet, send them an alert, set due date to 3 business days from now, and post a notification to Slack."

What Smart Flows builds: A multi-action automation with conditional logic, cross-sheet lookup, date calculation, and external integration — using only the plain language description.

This extends beyond current automation capabilities with more complex conditional logic and cross-platform actions.

Smart Agents

Digital coworkers with domain-specific reasoning. The first available: Project Manager Smart Agent.

What the PM Agent does:

• Continuously monitors project progress across your sheets
• Identifies schedule risks before they become delays
• Suggests plan optimizations (resequencing tasks, reallocating resources)
• Proactively flags delayed tasks and their downstream impact
• Recommends resource reallocation when someone is over-capacity

Important: The PM Agent operates under human approval. Suggestions are presented to the PM for review and acceptance — it doesn't auto-execute changes to your project. The human maintains control.

Future agents planned: Finance Agent (budget monitoring), HR Agent (workforce planning), IT Operations Agent (incident management).

Smart Hub

Central control center for all AI features across your organization.

• Configure which AI features are enabled and who has access
• Set data governance rules (which sheets AI can reference)
• Audit trail for all AI-generated actions and suggestions
• Manage AI capacity and usage across the organization

Honest Assessment

Data privacy: Smartsheet states it does not use customer data to train public models. AI processing happens within Smartsheet's secure infrastructure. Review Smartsheet's data processing agreement for your specific compliance requirements.

Plan availability: AI features are generally available on Enterprise and Advanced Work Management plans. Business plan has limited access. Free and Pro plans have minimal or no AI access.

How to Prepare

The AI features work best when your sheets are well-organized:

1. Use descriptive column names — "Task Name" is better than "Col A". The AI formula generator maps to column names.
2. Use consistent dropdown values — Smart Columns and automations match exact strings. Inconsistent values break AI logic.
3. Apply column types correctly — Date columns should contain dates, not text. Contact columns should use user emails, not typed names.
4. Maintain clean hierarchies — Smart Assist and the PM Agent understand parent-child structures. Flat sheets with no hierarchy provide less context.
5. Document your sheet's purpose — Use the Sheet Summary section to describe what the sheet tracks. This context helps AI features provide relevant suggestions.

Sheets built with these practices today will get more value from Smart Agents and Smart Columns when they reach general availability.