Compass Product Release

The Compass release includes some very exciting changes for Smartsheet users (some of which are being released a little later this month so my apologies for being cryptic).

The release art for Compass offers a small glimpse into the Pacific Northwest and was created by Colton Schweitzer, UX Designer. The artwork was created digitally using Adobe Illustrator, a familiar and well-loved tool for Colton. “I’ve always been fascinated by maps and compasses—I think they’re really cool. I grew up reading fantasy novels and always loved the maps and stuff they had in there, so I wanted to incorporate something about the magical part of a compass. Typically, you’re using a compass to go somewhere so why not show that?”

A compass is an appropriate metaphor for an exciting new feature in this release: Solution Center. When a user creates a new sheet they are taken to Solution Center, where they can browse and choose from a variety of pre-built solutions, templates, and add-ons. Clicking a tile opens a preview that contains a concise summary.

Creating Solution Center was a huge team effort, one that required coordinating with multiple project managers, the revenue team, the marketing team, and the user interface team. Another challenge was figuring out how to spread out the development work to meet the release date. Brett Batie, Lead Software Development Engineer, was one of five developers working on Solution Center for Compass. “We broke the page up into lots of modules and divided them pretty evenly between the developers. Doing so kept each developer busy and out of each other's way. Componentizing was a big key to getting this done on time,” said Brett. By splitting up the work for Solution Center, the team was able to meet and exceed the expectations outlined in the minimum viable product they were given.

The Solution Center was just one of many great updates. Please read the official release notes to see what other changes are included in the Compass release.