Building an Education Control Center Solution in Smartsheet

Overview

The client, a non-profit in the education sector, needed a Control Center-based solution that would allow them to leverage Smartsheet to update and develop curriculum for both virtual and in-person classes across all subjects, elementary through high school.

Project

To kick off the project, our CloudWave Smartsheet consultants worked closely with the client to understand the current state of their curriculum development system and what they ultimately wanted it to look like for the future.

The curriculum team was seeking a solution to manage the lifecycle of new curriculum development as well as tracking updates and corrections to existing courses. In addition to course development, they also needed the solution to track cost by comparing a person's hours for their assigned tasks to their bill rate and calculating appropriately.

Based on this feedback, the CloudWave team designed a future state architecture diagram for the client’s approval. The plan was to leverage Smartsheet’s premium Control Center application with automation that would save time for all of the teams involved in the curriculum development process - SMEs, copy editors, graphic designers, and beyond.

When triggered, a new project would be created by Smartsheet. This means that all of the sheets, reports, and dashboards would be created for the users and eliminate manual setup and copy/pasting. Smartsheet then would then add the project to the appropriate workspace and share it to the appropriate people. Project level information would already be shared to those who need access to it upon creation.

The project would also roll up to the portfolio level - dashboards, reporting, etc. are updated by this process. Any needed project-level information would be isolated and pushed to a higher level for easy review and sharing.

As our team continued working on the Control Center solution, they provided routine demos to the client and continued to collect feedback. They also created all necessary sheets, reports, dashboards, and processes, considering both the requirements as well as Smartsheet best practices.

When the solution was finished, we walked the client through user acceptance testing to eliminate any potential issues.

Before handing off the completed project, the CloudWave team also created detailed documentation custom to the solution and provided various levels of training to the appropriate groups - end users, project managers, and admins.

Results

About CloudWave

CloudWave Inc. is an information technology consulting firm based in Virginia that provides end to end services from architecture to development in niche cutting-edge cloud technologies. CloudWave specializes in application development, integration, and cloud offerings - SaaS, PaaS, IaS, machine learning/artificial intelligence, analytics/business intelligence, microservices, and enterprise document management. Since 2012, the company has developed classified/unclassified, innovative, cost-saving, low-risk solutions to federal and commercial customers both within the United States and globally. The team has more than 30 years of exceptional systems and architectures experience managing complex and compliant projects.

CloudWave has successfully integrated Smartsheet with Salesforce, MuleSoft, Google Cloud, Azure, Jira, Hubspot, and more so that our clients can have real-time access to all relevant information across multiple systems.

With CloudWave on your side, you can feel peace of mind knowing that you are working with an official Smartsheet platinum Partner. Our team has the expertise and experience to determine your organization’s vision, and then design a powerful solution to meet those needs.

For more information, get in touch with us here.