Fixing a milestone date

Rob

Hi,

 

I am building a project that will culmniate in at examination on a specific date. This date is 24th March 2016 and everything else in the sheet builds to this date.

 

How do I stop this mielstone changing date when I change the duration or dates of some of the precedends?

 

Thanks

Travis

Rob - it sounds like you are wanting to work backwards from a hard deadline (March 24th, 2016). You will want to use the Start-to-Finish predecessor relationship rather than Finish-to-Start (which is the default). Check out the template “Gantt Project with Hard Deadline” for an example of how to set this up in your sheet. 

System

Is there no way to fix a date without working backwards?

It would be much more comfortable in big projects with sub-projects.

Melanie Goodwin

Being able to "lock" a milestone without working backwards would be so helpful.

Travis

Melanie, it sounds like you might be looking for constraints, correct? I will submit your vote for this enhancement request! 

Melanie Goodwin

Yes. Basically I want to have milestones that can't be "pushed" when a preceding milestone is pushed around on the Gantt chart- such as the immovable deadline of a client presentation or conference which may fall in the middle of a project or at the very end. However I'd still like to be able to build projects from beginning to end rather than as a work-back schedule. Part of this need is the fact that I import some projects from other programs and they've already been built with Finish to Start dependencies and going back in and reorganizing them as StoF and working back is a huge time suck.

Michael

Just to add my vote to the 'feature' of being able to decide if a set of dates can move depending on dependencies, or if it is fixed (either, in the case of a milestone, both start and end date, or in the case of a task that lasts Xdays as well).

Travis

I have added your vote, Michael! 

Michael

Hi - is there any update on this? Usually (as in in other tools) I would be able to say that a specific set of dates can be 'no later than' or 'no earlier than'. A workaround would be to be able to fix milestones, i.e. to be able to choose a given milestone and disallow it to move. Please provide this feature! 

 

Thanks, 

 

Michael 

Travis

Thanks for following up, Michael! I have submitted your suggestion to the product team and they are aware of how it could benefit our users. This is not something they are currently working on but you can stay up to date on what is in development by checking out our product roadmap: https://www.smartsheet.com/product-roadmap

scotj5421

Hi, I've been reading the thread on setting a "Milestone date" constraint. I didn't understand the vote comment. How can I add a milestone constraint to my schedule?

Thanks (scotj)

Travis

Scotjm, Smartsheet does not have constraints but you can use the start to finish predecessor type to work backwards from a hard deadline, such as a milestone. Look at the Gantt Project with Hard Deadline template in our template gallery for an example of how this can be set up. 

Guillermo Jimenez

Hi,

You can also set all the tasks with Finish to Start predecessors, except the last one that leads to the hard deadline which will have both a Finish to start with the previous task and a Start to Finish with the hard deadline milestone. 

With this, if everything is according to plan, the critical path will only show the hard deadline milestone, as soon as one task takes longer, the last task will pass the milestone, the milestone won't move, and all tasks will show as being in the critical path. 

 

Hope this helps.

Kerry Henry

Please add my vote too.  This lack of functionality will reduce the software's desirability to be used across the company.

janedevine

Adding my vote, too. Thanks!

Andy McCormick

Although I'd love to have the constraints feature, for those who want a hard deadline and work from start to finish, I just add a conditional on my final task (in our case it's called "Launch") so that if the date for Launch gets pushed past my harddeadline then it turns the row red and and I know I need to readjust.  Honestly, I don't see how this is much different than constraints. Since all constraints would do is pop up and tell you that crossed your hard-deadline and need to adjust.