Recurring Tasks

gestep

Hello I am setting up a smartsheet that will be used to track all the recurring task we have to do in a year. The frequency at which these repeat vary drastically so I wanted to see how one would format their sheet to account for this.

For example I have a task that needs to be done the Monday following all major holidays (Christmas, 4th of July, Memorial Day, etc). I also have some that need to be completed every quarter so I would make the deadline the last workday of a quarter. I want to automate the deadline date to change automatically based on the frequency I set.

Is there an easy way to format this or any recommendations you would have when creating this sheet? Thank you!

Genevieve P.

Hi @gestep

What I would personally do here is have different sections of the sheet set up for your recurring alerts. Then pre-fill all the rows for the year with dates.

So, all the Monday tasks in a group under a specific header, with their date selected in a date column (versus having this date cell in one row continually updated). Does that make sense?

Cheers,

Genevieve

gestep

Hello @Genevieve P.

Thank you for your response. I think I am confused as to how the "due date" field would then update. Here below I have provided a screenshot to how my sheet is set up based on my interpretation of your suggestion.

I currently have the checkbox set up so when it gets clicked, the last completed date field will automatically update with the date that the box was checked. I then have another automation that will automatically clear that checkmark once a certain amount of days have pasted. I am just confused how you would then formulate the due date field to show the due date that applies most if these tasks are supposed to be done at different times.

Genevieve P.

Hi @gestep

My apologies for not being clear; I was suggesting to manually fill out all the dates ahead of time, so no automated updates to the date fields. Something like this, with headers and sections to easily expand/collapse as tasks are completed.

Currently Smartsheet has a "Record a Date" workflow that will record today's date, but it does not record a date in the future.

With your set-up, you could use a formula to add a specific number of days onto the recorded date (the checkbox date) based on what's in your Occurrence column.

For example:

=IF(Occurrence@row = "Annually", [Due Date 1]@row + 365, IF(Occurrence@row = "Quarterly", [Due Date 1]@row + 91

And so on.

Cheers,

Genevieve