Marking Successors Status as "Ready" when the Predecessors Status is changed to "Complete"

KTvine

I am working with a large sheet and developing an automation to update task statuses: when one task is marked as "Complete," the subsequent task is automatically set to "Ready." While my formulas are functioning correctly on a smaller scale, the size of my new sheet is leading to performance issues.

Currently, my sheet is organized with hierarchy by project, and tasks are divided into phases. I'm utilizing the Smartsheet Dependencies feature to import start and due dates. While my formulas work properly in my smaller sheets, I encounter errors or the sheet crashes when attempting to set up this larger capacity sheet. The new sheet contains 7,613 rows.

Here is what I have working in my smaller sheets:
• "Ready Automation Start" column that uses this formula: =IF(Status@row = "Complete", "100%", "")

• "Go" checkbox column that uses this formula: =IF(Predecessors@row = "", "", COUNTIFS(Successors:Successors, HAS(@cell, [Row #]@row), [Ready Automation Start]:[Ready Automation Start], OR(ISBLANK(@cell ), @cell < 1)) = 0)

• "Successors" column with this formula: =JOIN(SUCCESSORS([Row #]@row), CHAR(10))

• Automation:
-Trigger: (rows are chaged) When "Go" changes to Checked
-Condition: Where Status is one of "Not Started" and where "Go" is checked
-Change cell value: change cell value in "Status" to "Ready"

Am I out of luck at making this functionality work at this crazy large scale?

S.Stone

With that many rows, I wonder if it's too "expensive" to run everything with formulas that are constantly being calculated. I wonder if you can swap any of your formulas for automations so it's only running some of those things when triggered…

• "Ready Automation Start" column that uses this formula: =IF(Status@row = "Complete", "100%", "") - can you try an automation that prints "100%" instead of the IF formula?
• "Go" checkbox column that uses this formula: =IF(Predecessors@row = "", "", COUNTIFS(Successors:Successors, HAS(@cell , [Row #]@row ), [Ready Automation Start]:[Ready Automation Start], OR(ISBLANK(@cell ), @cell < 1)) = 0) - This one might need helper columns or multiple automations to have it all run smoothly, but maybe one automation could check the flag(?) for [Ready Automation Start] and another could check the "Go" checkbox with the remaining criteria. I can't visualize this one well, so I'd need to play with it, but it might be worth exploring.
• "Successors" column with this formula: =JOIN(SUCCESSORS([Row #]@row), CHAR(10)) - is this just acting as a helper column for your other formulas? Depending on how you set up other formulas/automations, you may be able to eliminate it…
• Any other formulas on your list that you could redesign/rescale to automations or otherwise simplify?

Note: I am not an IT person, so I am not sure if this is a truly viable strategy, as I don't know how it all works "under the hood" so to speak. But I've heard enough from coding friends to know that running constant calculations is a lot for computers to keep up with, so they work to reduce checks and calculations whenever they can. But I figure it's worth a try!