Smartsheet Control Center, Portfolios, or Advanced Portfolios: which one fits your portfolio?

If your team runs a lot of similar projects in Smartsheet, you've likely reached the point where copying an old workspace and rebuilding the reports each time no longer works. Smartsheet now offers three ways to address that: Control Center, Portfolios, and the newly announced Advanced Portfolios. They overlap more than the names suggest, so choosing the right one depends on how many projects you run and how much control you need over them.

What is Smartsheet Control Center?

Smartsheet Control Center is a premium Smartsheet offering for managing many projects at scale. You define a blueprint once (the sheets, reports, dashboards, and forms that make up a project), and Control Center uses it to create new projects, push changes across active projects, and roll project data into portfolio reporting. It's included with Smartsheet's Advanced Work Management plan and sold as an add-on for other paid plans.

What Control Center does

Control Center is built around three problems that show up once a portfolio grows past a handful of projects: leaders can't see across it, every project is set up a little differently, and the admin work grows with every new project.

Visibility across the portfolio

• Demand intake: New project requests come in through an intake sheet, so they're reviewed and approved in one place before any work is set up.
• Program reports and dashboards: Data from every project rolls up automatically, so reporting stays current as new projects are added.
• Portfolio WorkApps: Each role gets a tailored view of the projects and dashboards they need, all in one place.

Consistency across every project

• Blueprints: Define the sheets, reports, dashboards, and forms that make up a project once, so every new project starts the same way.
• Automated provisioning: New projects are created from the blueprint automatically when a request is approved.
• Global updates: When your standard changes, push the update to every active project from one place instead of editing projects one at a time.
• Profile data: Capture the same key fields for every project, such as owner, status, and budget, so portfolio reporting compares like with like.

Scale as the portfolio grows

• Multi-tier: Structure the portfolio in parent and child levels, so reporting and control work across departments, clients, or regions.
• Resource Management: Link Control Center to Smartsheet's Resource Management to see who's available and avoid overbooking.
• Project archiving: Move finished projects out of the active portfolio while keeping a record for historical reporting.

What are Smartsheet Portfolios?

Portfolios is included with Smartsheet's Enterprise plan and is designed for teams and departments with simpler needs. Project leads can set up a standard template and spin up new project workspaces from it without a dedicated admin. Smartsheet recommends keeping each portfolio to around five templates and 100 projects. Resource Management, Dynamic View, and data integrations aren't currently supported in Portfolios.

What are Smartsheet Advanced Portfolios?

Advanced Portfolios is Smartsheet's newest option, announced in November 2026. It builds on Portfolios for teams that run many similar projects and need each one held to the same standard. You can publish a change once and have every active project inherit it, connect project fields to the portfolio with linked summary fields, and see everything in a portfolio summary. It's included with Advanced Work Management and available as an add-on. It doesn't support multi-tier portfolios, Portfolio WorkApps, or the native Resource Management integration, which is where Control Center still stands apart.

How to choose

Here's how the three options compare on the features that usually decide it.

The right fit depends on the scale and complexity of what you're managing. Portfolios is usually enough for a single department managing a manageable number of projects. Advanced Portfolios makes sense when you need tighter standards and want changes to flow automatically to every project. Control Center is the choice for large, complex programs that need multi-tier structures, role-based WorkApps, or resource planning tied directly to projects. It's worth deciding before you build, because rebuilding a portfolio in a different model later takes real time.

Frequently asked questions

How Virelli helps

Virelli sells and implements Smartsheet alongside the other work management platforms we work with. Our Smartsheet experts bring the same portfolio management depth we apply on every platform we sell, so our advice starts with what your portfolio needs rather than with a product. For portfolio management in Smartsheet, that usually means:

• Choosing the right option: Deciding between Portfolios, Advanced Portfolios, and Control Center, including the plan or add-on that goes with it.
• Designing blueprints and templates: Building them around the way your teams already work, with the data your reporting needs.
• Configuring automation: Setting up intake, approvals, and automated project creation so new projects start the same way every time.
• Optimizing what you have: Cleaning up an existing Control Center environment and supporting it as your standards change.