Why don't I see the critical path?

Ashley McAdoo

No Critical Path.png

Hello Community,

I have predecessors and dependencies, but I don't really see a critical, summary or driving path even though I have clicked to show them. Can anyone tell me why?

Thanks,

Ashley

AravindGP

Hi @Ashley McAdoo

Unfortunately, Smartsheet only has the capability to show critical path when your tasks are listed chronologically. I can see from the screenshot that they are not, which is causing the issue.

AravindGP

Hi @Ashley McAdoo

Unfortunately, Smartsheet only has the capability to show critical path when your tasks are listed chronologically. I can see from the screenshot that they are not, which is causing the issue.

Ashley McAdoo

Thanks@AravindGP , that should be an easy fix!

jduran

Hi @Ashley McAdoo,

I have two other things you may want to check as reasons for not seeing the critical path. It appears there is a task that spans the entire project, in this case if the critical path were to display, it would be a box around this task. If this is a management/oversight-type task, try creating a parent task and breaking it up into child tasks (such as 2Q2024 Oversight, 3Q2024 Oversight, etc.) smaller than the other project tasks until that parent is not on the critical path.

The snippet you shared did not show the end of the project, so the second thing to check is, do you have at least one task as a predesessor to the last task in your plan, and enough predesessor links along the way to create at least one path from beginning to end? That is, if you print a gantt view of the overall project, can you put a pencil on the last task and follow at least one path of linked lines back to the beginning without lifting the pencil, if the answer is no, a ciritical path can't be calculated.

Please let us know if you were able to get the critical path to display 😁