A
Aaron Bitton
I would really like to see page display options that 'feel' like documents, wikis, and blogs - open, focused on content, structured navigation. For the most part, SmartSuite feels like tables and databases. That's great in some contexts (like task mgmt), but it's not in others, and for the user to feel like SmartSuite is a true all-in-one solution, they need to feel like it serves as a good place to accomplish their normal work functions. This means their "non-databasy" work tasks need to feel normal.
For example, I need to create both a Customer Knowledge Base and a Company Knowledge Base for my company.
Although SmartSuite offers solutions in the forms of Support Library and Employee Learning, when I click through the app, what I see are a bunch of tables and boxes. It doesn't feel like a wiki. It doesn't feel like a document.
In the case of documents, since I began tryout out SmartSuite's software, I've been quite confused as to how to use SmartSuite for company documentation. I'm still not clear on it and assume I'm supposed to do it inside the different solutions in SmartDocs, but it doesn't feel natural or comfortable. In other words, it makes the user feel that SmartSuite isn't the correct solution for documentation/wiki needs.
Thoughts from the user's point of view:
  • I don't see any folders or tree structures for my documentation, or any initial home screen guidance that indicates where I should create and store my docs.
  • What if I don't want to organize/categorize my docs the same way SmartSuite has labeled them? I guess I could create my own solution, but I'd like not to have to go through that effort. SmartSuite's amazing templates are a big draw and save so much user thought, time, effort, and mistakes.
  • Even if I do like SmartSuite's solution categorization for my documentation purposes, there's no way to group all of my SmartSuite's solutions in My Workspace, so I have this big long list of solutions I have to scan through every time I'm looking for one. (Preferably the user would be able to collapse these groups and not have to be routed away to another 'group page' only to have to backtrack if the desired solution wasn't in that group.)
I would suggest the following:
  • Create page display options that seriously remove/hide/minimize/relocate/group/group-collapse data fields so that the focus is almost entirely on the document's content, not its properties. In documents, properties are side notes, just the details - the real work, the important stuff, happens in the content. The user wants access to the details but to focus on the content.
  • Offer an option to display records as part of the main page, not just as a pop-up box. Pop-up boxes reduce content view area and leave a background page that busies & distracts from the content's focus - something that's not helpful when studying/learning/creating - those efforts require more immersion.
  • Offer hierarchical content navigation and an option to include breadcrumbs inside content-focused page displays.
  • Offer the ability to transclude pages within any hierarchical tier of any document so every source page/module/record only has to be updated in one place.
  • Offer the ability to publish the page - with settings for view/edit and personal, company, or public. (already addressed in separate post)
  • When we post them as public or internal wikis, offer the ability for our customers or employees to search content through the content on our published sites
  • Offer displays that don't show up as pop-ups, but instead as the entire screen. See attached pics for dif in feel between a Coda document and a SmartSuite document. Coda's has easy navigation & the rest of the screen is almost entirely focused on content creation. Open & clean. Feels like a document. Best of all, their Share button allows you to immediately publish your document (and to choose dif settings).
Although SmartSuite's 70/30 is a better page display for content as it begins with a content box, nothing about these page displays feels like a document. It feels like a database. It feels like there are these boxes all over the place demanding the user's attention when the user is really just there to create content - not fill out document attributes (which they may or may not need to do).
Every company on Earth has documentation needs, and plenty of them. If SmartSuite can effectively marry the power of their database systems to the users' work-environment needs, I think it'll be a real winner and will really draw people in.