At its core, Control Center creates new items from templates and automatically provisions them when a new request is submitted through an intake sheet.
Here’s how it works in practice:
A new request lands on your intake sheet. This can happen via a form, or (especially for projects) through the Smartsheet Salesforce Connector. You could do this through an API as well.
You can choose to trigger provisioning immediately, or only after an approval step. This gives you flexibility depending on how controlled your process needs to be.
Once approved, Control Center provisions a workspace or folder using your pre-built templates.
These templates can include anything you’ve set up in advance:
The powerful part is that the data captured in your intake sheet is automatically pushed into the newly created assets. This ensures consistency and removes manual setup work.
After provisioning, Control Center can automatically add a row to a separate sheet, commonly called a summary sheet.
In simple terms:
Your summary sheet becomes a high-level portfolio view. However, for operational teams, it’s often better to use reports of the summary sheet so each team only sees the columns relevant to them.
When projects are completed, Control Center can archive them.
This step isn’t fully automatic, but it’s quick, you typically just need a couple of clicks. Most teams handle archiving on a weekly basis.
Control Center is extremely powerful, but setting it up can feel overwhelming at first.
A successful setup requires:
In short: the tool works brilliantly but only if everything is set up correctly from the start.
If you have access to Control Center and want to automate your project creation but aren’t sure where to begin, I can help you design and build the whole setup.