Resource Management and Contact List

Bart P

I have a project tracking sheet where the "Assigned To" field is a contact list. For the first row of the sheet, the Assigned To cell is calculated based on a Summary Sheet value (=[IT Contact]#). All the task level Assigned To values are then selected from the contact list from-down.

This works fine until I turn on Resource Management.

Turning on Resource Management and making "Assigned To" the Assigned Resource Column removes the formula in from the first row and forces it to be a drop-down list.

Just want confirm if other people are seeing the same thing or if I'm doing something wrong.

Thanks.

Bart

Resource Management Disabled.png

Resource Management Enabled.png

AravindGP

Hi @Bart P

If you have the Sheet summary field as a Contact List column type and a value exists for the IT Contact before you connect the project to RM, it will change the formula as a normal contact as you can no longer have a formula in a column that is being used. Similar to the dates that are connected in the Project Settings.

Bart P

Thanks Aravind,

Just to make sure I understand you correctly, when RM gets activated, any formulas that exist in either the designated Assigned Resource and % Allocation column will be removed? That's consistent with what I'm seeing.

In my case, IT Contact is the sheet summary field that the Assigned To field initially referenced through a formula.

Bart

Lindsay Whitbread

Bart,

If you have a fairly small and infrequently changing set of IT contacts, you could always use a "Cell Change" automation to set the cell to the IT contact. The automation would look at who the IT contact is and then change the assigned to cell to the correct contact.

However, if that doesn't describe your situation, you will need to use a third party automation to set the IT contact. Something like this could be achieved with Zapier or Python as well as Bridge if you have that available.

Lindsay

Bart P

Hi Lindsay,

In my case I don't think the Cell Change automation would work since my IT Contact field is a Summary Field which can't be referenced through an automation.

Bart

Lindsay Whitbread

You can just create a new column that references the Summary Field in a formula, then make that a column formula. That's a pretty commonly used workaround so I'm hoping that would work fine for you too.