Updating dates to build a project plan

Vesna Jesic

I am a complete newbie so please bare with me. I am creating a project plan with a target submission date. We have a guideline how much time should each task take. Is there a way that dates populate automatically when you are planning backwards? I cannot believe I need to calculate each ask and enter start and and date manually -I have over 500 tasks.

In my mind this should possible when I put a submission deadline at the end as a last task, that when I include all durations for each task, that the smartsheet will auto populate all tasks start and end dates? Or what is the way to do this? Please help me explaining how this can be done, its a smart sheet isnt it?

Paul Newcome

You would leverage the predecessors. Essentially, Task 34's "predecessor" would be Task 35. I believe you will need to specify FS or SF. I can't remember which right off, but at that point, you would enter the tasks, durations, and predecessors, and everything should work backwards from the manually entered end date.

Michael Drayton

Hello Friend! If you've started entering dates, that's a great starting point. I would now take the last row and paste them all the way down your project schedule.

Now, make sure you've activated your dependencies by right clicking on any column and select Edit Project Settings - follow those instructions. You'll see a new column called dependencies. Now you can adjust your dependencies according to your specifications.

It's also important to distinguish your Milestones, Activities and Tasks through indenting header rows, this too will affect your dates.

Let me know if that did the trick! Good luck!

Vesna Jesic

Hi Michael, thank you so much for a quick response. I have distinguished milestones and critical tasks, as well as enabled dependencies, but did not write them down yet. I still do not understand from your answer how to auto populate all start and end dates? In the ideal world I wish to believe that when I include my deadline and duration for each task, all start and end dates should auto populate - but its not happening. How do you do this for your project, what is it that you create to enable this?

What you mean by "take the last row and paste them all the way down your project schedule." The project tasks are above and not below.

Paul Newcome

You would leverage the predecessors. Essentially, Task 34's "predecessor" would be Task 35. I believe you will need to specify FS or SF. I can't remember which right off, but at that point, you would enter the tasks, durations, and predecessors, and everything should work backwards from the manually entered end date.

Vesna Jesic

hi @Paul Newcome that worked! I cannot thank you enough, you made my day :) sending you a hug!

Paul Newcome

Happy to help. 👍️