When a parent is marked complete how to mark remaining children tasks complete

Jett

I have a list that has many parents in the sheet and below that are 4 children tasks. Each have a due date. Not all will need all 4 tasks. How do I have it so when then parent is marked complete it will mark the 4 children tasks complete. This way it will not send notifications if overdue since they will be marked complete. I only want it to change for these specific children under this parent not the whole row which will mess up other tasks.

Michelle Choate 2

=IF(PARENT([Task Name Column]@row) = "Complete", "Complete", "") and use this formula in just those child rows. This will not allow you to have another status for the child rows, though.

Kerry St. Thomas

A quick answer is to use a helper column. Make that column a formula similar to:

=IF(COUNT(ANCESTORS(StatusCheck@row)) = 0, StatusCheck@row, IF(AND(COUNT(ANCESTORS(StatusCheck@row)) = 1, StatusCheck@row = 1), 1, IF(AND(COUNT(ANCESTORS(StatusCheck@row)) = 1, PARENT(StatusCheck@row) = 1), 1, 0)))

If this is a child row then a box will check if either its own row's box is checked or the parent row's box is. If it's a parent row and the box is checked, all its parent and children boxes will be checked. You can then hang your notification automation off this formula column instead of the manual checks.

(Note that this strategy WILL NOT check the manual columns - but you could conceivably also add a Change Cell Value automation that checks or unchecks those cells when the formula column changes. It will also not work if you use multiple levels of indentation on your task sheet - you can modify the count of ancestors you want to consider. Lastly, I prefer having these helper columns created and then hide them so it's not confusing to end users.)

Good luck and happy Smartsheeting!