ISCRITICAL is FALSE for a PARENT task with CHILD tasks that are on the critical path

CyberLady

I have a project plan where the child tasks are on the critical path with ISCRITICAL = TRUE, but for the parent task, ISCRITICAL = FALSE. Is this expected behavior?

Context: It's a waterfall project. Only the child tasks have predecessors and successors so that the dates and duration for the parent task adjust when the child tasks are updated.

I have created a workaround to identify the PARENT row as critical if any of its child tasks are critical. Is it is expected behavior for the PARENT row to evaluate ISCRITICAL without regard to its CHILD tasks? If this is expected behavior, how do I request that Smartsheet update the documentation for ISCRITICAL to reflect this behavior?

Formula used for ISCRITICAL (Y/N): =IFERROR(IF(ISCRITICAL([Task Name]@row), "Y", "N"), "?")
Thanks in advance for your help.

Genevieve P.

Hi @CyberLady

Yes, this is expected - you can see this if you turn on the critical path in Gantt view, and look at the tasks that turn red:

Since Parent rows are rollup summary rows, they are not considered as individual tasks in the Critical Path. Here's more information: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/1979152-tracking-a-project-s-critical-path#toc-tips-and-troubleshooting

Cheers,
Genevieve

Genevieve P.

Hi @CyberLady

Yes, this is expected - you can see this if you turn on the critical path in Gantt view, and look at the tasks that turn red:

Since Parent rows are rollup summary rows, they are not considered as individual tasks in the Critical Path. Here's more information: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/1979152-tracking-a-project-s-critical-path#toc-tips-and-troubleshooting

Cheers,
Genevieve

CyberLady

Thank you. This is exactly the behavior I am seeing in the project plan template I inherited. I will adjust the formula in our template to meet our needs.