Productivity Integration
Smartsheet AI Assistant — Run Your Sheets by Email
Carly is an AI assistant for Smartsheet that adds rows, updates cells, sends update requests, and pulls status rollups — all by email or text. Connect it with your own Smartsheet API token and stop opening the grid for every small edit.
Try Carly →What Carly can do with Smartsheet
Add and update rows without opening the sheet
Text Carly the change — new intake row, revised target date, owner reassignment — and she writes the cells in the right row of the right sheet, matching your column names and picklist values.
Send update requests to workstream leads
Ask Carly to send an update request on specific rows and columns to your leads with a due date and a message. She creates it through Smartsheet so responses land back in the sheet the normal way.
Get a status rollup emailed to you
Ask for everything At Risk across the program rollup, or what's due in the next ten days by owner. Carly reads the sheets and reports, filters, and sends the answer as readable text.
File attachments and comments from your inbox
Forward Carly a vendor's revised SOW and tell her which row it belongs to. She attaches the file to that row and adds a comment noting what changed and who sent it.
The gap between Smartsheet automation and the work people actually do
Smartsheet's built-in automation is strong at rules that live inside a sheet: when a status cell changes to At Risk, alert the project owner; when a date passes, send a reminder. Those rules fire on their own schedule, on their own triggers, inside the platform.
What they don't cover is the ad hoc half of a PMO's day. A vendor emails a revised delivery date and someone has to open the rollup sheet, find the right row, and change two cells. A director asks which workstreams slipped this week and someone builds the answer by hand. A team lead needs status from six people and clicks through the update request wizard six times.
None of that is rule-shaped. It's request-shaped — and it's why people who own Smartsheet sheets spend so much time inside the grid doing five-second edits that cost five minutes of context switching.
How Carly works as your Smartsheet AI assistant
Carly connects to Smartsheet using your own API access token — Smartsheet isn't one of Carly's ~260 native connectors, so this is a bring-your-own-key integration. You generate a token in Smartsheet under your account profile → Personal Settings → API Access, then paste it on Carly's integrations page at carlyassistant.com/integrations. It takes about a minute and gives Carly the same access your account already has, nothing more.
Once it's connected, you work by email or text. "Add a row to the Q3 Implementation Tracker for the Ridgeline migration, owner Dana, target date Sept 12, status Not Started." "Change the status on the data-migration row to At Risk and put a comment on it explaining the vendor pushed the date." "Send an update request to the six workstream leads on the Program Rollup for their status and percent-complete columns, due Thursday." Carly finds the sheet, resolves the row, writes the cells, and confirms what changed.
She reads too. Ask for everything in a report that's flagged red, or a summary of which rows changed since Monday, and Carly pulls it and writes it back to you as plain text — not a link you have to open.
Where Carly fits for PMO and ops teams running rollups
Program managers who own a rollup sheet fed by a dozen project sheets and spend Thursday afternoons chasing status. Ops leads maintaining resource plans that change every time someone reschedules. Implementation managers running the same intake sheet across thirty customer onboardings. Anyone who is the designated Smartsheet person on a team where nobody else wants to learn the grid.
The wedge is the people who never log in. A field supervisor or an external vendor won't open Smartsheet, but they will reply to a text. They message Carly, Carly writes the row, and the sheet stays current without another license or another training session. Carly's Zapier-style workflow steps are free; AI agents start at $35/month.
See it in action
How to connect Smartsheet to Carly
Sign up for Carly
Create your account in under 2 minutes.
Connect Smartsheet
Authorize the Smartsheet integration from your Carly dashboard. One click, and you're connected.
Start giving instructions
Email or text Carly with what you need done in Smartsheet. She handles the rest.
Automate Smartsheet in 2 minutes
No complex setup. No code. Just tell Carly what you need.
Get Started →Frequently asked questions
What is the best AI assistant for Smartsheet?
Carly is an AI assistant that connects to Smartsheet and lets you add rows, update cells, attach files, add comments, send update requests, and pull status rollups — all by email or text. She works from outside Smartsheet, so you can keep sheets current without opening the grid.
How do I connect Smartsheet to Carly?
Smartsheet is a bring-your-own-key integration. In Smartsheet, select your profile at the bottom of the left nav, go to Personal Settings → API Access, and generate a new access token — copy it right away, since it's only shown once. Paste it on Carly's integrations page at carlyassistant.com/integrations and Carly can read and write your sheets.
Does Smartsheet API access require a specific plan?
Yes. Smartsheet gates API access to Business, Enterprise, and Advanced Work Management plans — Free and Pro accounts can't generate an access token. If you're on Business or above you can create the token yourself in Personal Settings; there's no sales process or approval queue involved.
Can Carly send Smartsheet update requests?
Yes. Tell Carly which rows and columns you need updated, who should get the request, and when it's due, and she creates the update request through Smartsheet. Recipients get the standard Smartsheet email and can respond without a license, and their answers write straight back into the sheet.
Can Carly build Smartsheet dashboards or reports?
No — and neither can anything else built on the Smartsheet API. Smartsheet doesn't expose endpoints for creating report criteria or laying out dashboard widgets, so those stay a job for the web app. What Carly can do is read them: ask her what a report currently contains and she'll pull the rows and summarize them for you by email or text.
How is Carly different from Smartsheet's built-in automation?
Smartsheet's workflow rules are trigger-based and run inside a sheet — a cell changes, an alert fires. Carly is request-based: you message her in plain language and she does the thing right then, including work that spans sheets or pulls in your email and calendar. She also can't create Smartsheet automation rules, since the API doesn't allow it — she does the work directly instead.
Can people who don't use Smartsheet update sheets through Carly?
Yes, and that's often the point. Field supervisors, contractors, and execs who won't log into Smartsheet can text or email Carly a status, and she writes it into the right row using your token. No extra license, no training on the grid.
Ready to automate your busywork?
Carly schedules, researches, and briefs you—so you can focus on what matters.
See what people say
"Before Carly, I relied on a Calendly link, but the whole process felt impersonal and not very professional. Carly changed that by handling all the back-and-forth, so I'm no longer stuck in endless email threads trying to line up schedules.
Now Carly reaches out to candidates, shares my real-time availability, lets them pick a slot, then sends a Zoom link and drops it straight into my calendar. She sends reminders to both of us before each call, which has significantly reduced no-shows and last-minute confusion.
On top of scheduling, Carly acts like a full executive assistant, sending me my schedule the night before so I can prepare for each call. It reminds me of the old x.ai assistant, but Carly is noticeably smarter, faster, and better suited to my healthcare recruitment business."