Smartsheet AI Features 2026: The Complete Guide to Intelligent Work Management

Smartsheet has made one of the boldest AI moves in the project management space. In late 2025, the company unveiled its “Intelligent Work Management” platform — a sweeping transformation that doesn’t just add AI as a sidebar feature, but weaves it directly into the core data structure, automation engine, and enterprise governance layer.

If you’re a Smartsheet user wondering what’s actually changed and how to take advantage of it in 2026, this guide breaks everything down — from what each AI feature does, to how to activate it, to which teams will benefit most.

What Is Smartsheet’s “Intelligent Work Management”?

Smartsheet’s Intelligent Work Management isn’t a single feature — it’s a platform philosophy. The idea is to unify AI, people, and data so that teams stop manually chasing status updates and start operating with AI as an active participant in project execution.

The platform now supports three layers of AI-powered intelligence:

• Generative AI for creating content, summarizing projects, and drafting automations
• Agentic AI for reasoning, decision-making, and taking actions inside workflows
• Enterprise governance through a centralized AI control center called Smart Hub

Let’s go through each feature in detail.

Smart Assist: Your AI Project Companion

What it does: Smart Assist is a conversational AI companion embedded directly inside Smartsheet. You can talk to it in plain English and it will design new projects, configure automations, answer real-time questions about deadlines, flag bottlenecks, and surface risks.

How to use it:

1. Open any sheet or project in Smartsheet
2. Click the Smart Assist icon in the top-right panel
3. Type your question or instruction (e.g., “Which tasks are overdue this week?” or “Set up an automation to notify the owner when a task moves to ‘In Review'”)
4. Smart Assist responds with insights or executes the action directly

Best use cases:
– Project managers who need instant status summaries without building reports
– Team leads who want to automate notifications without knowing the automation builder
– Executives who need plain-English project health checks

Current availability: Smart Assist was in private beta at the end of 2025 and entered Smartsheet’s Early Adopter Program (EAP) in 2026.

Smart Columns: AI Built Into Your Data Structure

What it does: Smart Columns bring AI processing directly into the cell level of your sheets. Instead of running a report or triggering an automation, Smart Columns can automatically categorize, label, translate, summarize, or enrich data as it’s entered.

Practical examples:

• A “Risk Level” Smart Column that automatically labels new rows as Low / Medium / High based on the task description and deadline
• A “Summary” Smart Column that auto-summarizes long text in a “Notes” field into a one-line overview
• A “Language” Smart Column that translates incoming form submissions from any language into English
• A “Sentiment” Smart Column for customer feedback sheets that tags responses as Positive / Neutral / Negative

How to add a Smart Column:

1. Click the + icon to add a new column
2. Select Smart Column from the column type menu
3. Choose the AI behavior: Categorize, Summarize, Translate, Label, or Custom
4. Configure the source column(s) and the output format
5. Smartsheet runs the AI processing as rows are added or updated

Who benefits most: Operations teams managing large intake sheets, support teams processing customer feedback, and project teams that need automated tagging without writing complex formulas.

Smart Agents: AI Coworkers That Reason and Act

What it does: Smart Agents are the most ambitious part of Smartsheet’s AI platform. They are digital coworkers — AI entities that can be assigned to specific workflows and given the authority to reason, make decisions, and take actions.

Unlike a simple automation (“when X happens, do Y”), a Smart Agent can handle multi-step reasoning: “Review all tasks in the backlog, prioritize based on deadline and owner workload, and reassign accordingly.”

Examples of Smart Agent tasks:
– Weekly project review: summarize overdue tasks, flag blockers, send status email to stakeholders
– Resource balancing: scan all active projects and redistribute tasks from overloaded team members
– Budget monitoring: check actual vs. budgeted hours weekly and flag projects exceeding 90% of budget

Current availability: Smart Agents were announced as part of Smartsheet’s 2026 roadmap and are being rolled out through the EAP. Enterprise customers get priority access.

Smart Hub: Enterprise AI Governance

What it does: Smart Hub is Smartsheet’s centralized control center for AI governance. For enterprises deploying AI at scale, it answers a critical question: “How is AI interacting with our data, and who controls it?”

Smart Hub capabilities:
– Define data access rules for AI (which sheets and columns AI can read or modify)
– Monitor AI usage across the organization
– Build and publish custom AI agents for your organization
– Set approval workflows for AI-generated actions before they execute
– Review AI decision logs for compliance and audit purposes

Who needs Smart Hub: Any organization in a regulated industry (finance, healthcare, legal, government) or any team that has sensitive data and needs to ensure AI doesn’t access what it shouldn’t.

Availability: Smart Hub is launching in 2026 for Enterprise plan customers.

Smartsheet Portfolios: AI-Powered Executive View

What it does: Smartsheet Portfolios gives executives and portfolio managers a single AI-powered view across all projects. Instead of manually rolling up status from individual sheets, Portfolios aggregates data and uses AI to surface insights, trends, and risks at the portfolio level.

Key features:
– Real-time portfolio health dashboard
– AI-generated summaries for each project
– Cross-project risk flagging
– Resource utilization across all projects

Availability: Smartsheet Portfolios entered the Early Adopter Program in Q1 2026 and is being generally released throughout the year.

Smartsheet + Claude MCP Integration: A Game-Changer for Power Users

One of the most technically exciting developments is Smartsheet’s MCP (Model Context Protocol) integration with Anthropic’s Claude AI. This allows teams to connect their Smartsheet data to Claude and interact with it through natural language in external tools.

What you can do with the Smartsheet-Claude MCP integration:
– Ask Claude “Which projects in my Smartsheet are at risk of missing their Q2 deadline?” and get a data-driven answer
– Ask Claude to create new rows, update statuses, or trigger automations via natural language
– Run complex cross-sheet analysis without building reports
– Get AI-written project summaries based on live Smartsheet data

How to set it up:
1. Go to Account Settings > Integrations > MCP Connectors in Smartsheet
2. Enable the Claude MCP connector
3. In Claude (or a Claude-powered tool), connect to your Smartsheet workspace using the MCP credentials provided
4. Start querying your Smartsheet data in natural language

This integration essentially turns Claude into a Smartsheet power user who can read, analyze, and act on your project data.

Which Smartsheet Plan Includes AI Features?

Not all AI features are available on all plans. Here’s the breakdown as of 2026:

Feature	Pro	Business	Enterprise
Basic AI formulas	✅	✅	✅
Smart Columns	Limited	✅	✅
Smart Assist	EAP	EAP	✅
Smart Agents	❌	EAP	✅
Smart Hub	❌	❌	✅
Portfolios	❌	❌	✅
Claude MCP Integration	❌	✅	✅

Note: EAP = Early Adopter Program. Features may change as they reach general availability.

How to Get Started With Smartsheet AI Today

If you’re already a Smartsheet user, here’s the fastest path to getting value from AI:

Step 1: Enable AI in your account
Go to Admin Center > Feature Settings and ensure AI features are enabled for your organization. Enterprise admins control this setting.

Step 2: Start with Smart Columns
Smart Columns have the lowest barrier to entry and the highest immediate ROI. Find one sheet where you’re manually categorizing or summarizing data and replace it with a Smart Column.

Step 3: Experiment with Smart Assist
Open a project you manage and ask Smart Assist a real question: “What tasks are blocking this project?” The answer quality will show you exactly how powerful this tool is.

Step 4: Apply for the Early Adopter Program
For Smart Agents and Smart Hub, apply for the EAP through your Smartsheet account manager or at smartsheet.com/intelligent-work.

The Bottom Line

Smartsheet’s 2026 AI platform isn’t just about adding chatbots to project management. It’s a genuine architectural shift — AI is now woven into the data layer (Smart Columns), the workflow layer (Smart Agents), and the governance layer (Smart Hub). For teams managing complex, cross-functional work at scale, this represents a meaningful productivity leap.

The teams who will get the most out of it are those willing to invest a few hours in setup and configuration. The payoff — fewer status meetings, faster project delivery, and proactive risk management — is substantial.

Related Posts:
– How to Set Up Smartsheet Automations: A Step-by-Step Guide
– Smartsheet vs Monday.com 2026: Which Platform Is Right for Your Enterprise?
– Top 10 Smartsheet Integrations to Supercharge Your Workflow