Is it possible to assign a task to multiple people?

Robin Sherwood

First off I would like to thank all the people who have stated an interest in this feature. We are always inspired by how passionate Smartsheet users are. I would especially like to thank those of you who took the time to describe what it is you are trying to do, and how you expect multiple assignees to work. Although it may seem like this is “just” a simple thing, I assure you it is not. By providing more details, you can help us understand how we might break this feature up and ship incremental improvements. This is the best way to get complex features implemented sooner.

 

As Travis has stated on multiple occasions prioritization is a complex task, this forum and support cases are just one of many input sources. In the last 9 months this thread has had 62 unique users ask for this feature in one form or another. Within this thread there are differing use cases; some of you need resource management, some of you need multi assignment for notifications only. If we could do one of these features without the other and it may take half the time, at the price of not fulfilling some of this groups needs.

 

In the same time period as this thread has been active, we received hundreds of support requests for “multiple assignee.” We also received thousands of support requests for formula enhancement likes VLookup, better reporting and dash-boarding, web-forms, notifications, the list goes on... With tens of thousands of paying accounts, ranging from individual users to fortune 100 companies we hear lots of ideas from lots of people. And the thing is we do listen; to support, to sales, to direct customer calls, to usability studies, surveys, our competition. Our roadmap represents the diverse needs of our customers. What may merely seem like a “nice to have” for one is absolutely a deal killer for someone else. Do we see multiple assignees as an important project management feature? Yes, absolutely we do. It just isn’t higher than the other items on the list.

 

That being said, it will probably show up on the roadmap later in the year, so help us understand why you need multiple assignees so we can work on building the best experience possible for largest number of people.

 

If you would like to setup a time to chat about your specific case, you can either post here, or send me email and we can setup a call.

 

Cheers,

 

Robin

rsherwood@smartsheet.com

vpbone

Please add me to the list of needing multiple assignees to a single task.

Ben Carruth

Hi Robin!

Here's a use case that brought me to this thread.

I coordinate a studio of artists that produce elements for film. Our delivery schedules and workflow are highly complex and dynamic. We are generally creating for many clients at a time, each with many individual projects with individual timelines.

 

Tasking employees to each of these projects via smartsheet allows us to generate a Gantt view of their individual availability in the event a timeline requirement changes (which occurs several times a week on good weeks, several times a day on rough ones).

 

This works fine for a quick view so long as they are assigned individually. For more complex work, however, we often have multiple artists assigned to a given task and multiple tasks assigned simultaneously to a given artist. The latter is easy to visually represent, but the former breaks down as Smartsheet doesn't have a ready-made option to assign multiple people to one task and generate a report reflecting that assignment (i.e. showing an ordered timeline of all tasks "JIMMY" is assigned to, including ones where he isn't the sole assignee).

 

-Ben

Doug B

Our company manufactures housing for remote camps for a variety of industries.  During our bid/build process, we may have several designers/estimators working on the project task, one at say 25%, another at 40%  and another at 35%.  For example, one of the resources could be our project manager who oversees the particular task (building permit) but needs to show his time on the task even though other resources are also working on it.  Our comparison with Microsoft Project is the ability to assign multiple resources to the task using %'s etc.  This now gives us a view of who is assigned to each task and what the resource requirements are.  Resources don't have to be people either, it could be material, a contractor, etc. In the Project Resource View, for a sheet, it shows the sheets assigned to a resource, but we cannot easily see which tasks are assigned to the resource or see which resources are attached to a task.  In the Gant Chart View, we can display the resource on the far right, but with multiple resources, it would be nice to see each name with the % allocation for the task, ie Mary (25%), Joe (40%), Harry (35%).  I've illustrated below how we have to break down the structure right now for a task with multiple resources and then attempted to show a Task b, what a combination starts to look like.

B.T.W. I really like Smartsheet, it is well thought-out, easy to use, easy to teach people how to use with lots of supporting short videos and text.  Keep up the good work!

 

 

 

Rob Young

Similar to Joseph and other comments, this is a major product drawback, duplicating every single project line potentially multiple times is not a viable option

MCobanoglu

This sounds like MS releasing new version of Windows OS  without " Start " button ,  and we all recently saw how the "start" button came back in 8.1 and now in version 10 !

 

Including my case at the moment , this is one of " must have " feature which Smartsheet Executives needs to see and adress it quickly .

 

Hope to see the post that will clearly show when this feature will be available for the serious customers .

 

Regards

Symont

Thank you for your detailed reply Robin.

 

I surely can appreciate the juggling required to establish priorities in order to satisfy your customer base. I guess what is harder to grasp for us (me), is the fact that your website places Project Management as the very first proposed application in your “Solutions” section. And, as far as I know, assigning resources to tasks is at the core of Project Management. In a way… you have created the expectation .

 

Of course, resources don’t only mean people, but that's the matter in hands.

 

Anyway, to answer your question, multi assignment for notifications only is not a priority for us. Well, it would certainly be appreciate. But the different notification tools you are already providing us take care of this need with workarounds and a little imagination. Same as for the Parent Task not showing on a Child Task notification. Annoying, but nothing that can’t be fixed with a not-too-cumbersome-workaround-that-can-be-hide.

 

The real need is to be able to link more than one person to a task. Then, a mean to allocate different % that will reflect in the Resource Management window. I visualize the Task’ "Assigned To" cell to be a pop-up child table instead of a single field. And the time or % Allocation cell must also be part of this child table (no more declared Allocation custom column, a small price to pay).

 

• - A way to identify the main assignee would be a bonus. But we can think of workarounds for that.
• - Showing at least the first 3 assignees on the Gantt would also be a great bonus. 
  
• - Finally, a multi-projects Resource Management window would be the ultimate tool.
• ...But let start somewhere.

 

bagelboy

Is there any update on this. Looking for a tool to suggest to our company, but this seems an essential feature. The idea that one person should be allocated to each row is too simplistic.

Allen Hook

I am in the process of reviewing the product as a replacement for MS Project.   I was recreating one of the time lines under the 30 trial when I ran into this speedbump.  I cannot in good faith reccommend the product as a replacement without this feature or at least some kind of resonable estimate of if and when it will be available. 

Dan Arnott

Unfortunately it appears that even though they keep saying they love to hear our feedback, they are not actually doing anything about it. This isn't a fancy feature we are asking for! Basic project management requires us to be able to assign multiple people to a task. its starting to feel like we have been duped into using a product that was falsely advertised as being amazing at project management, when its not.

T.C. Mayes

Bottom line is that there are team activities and roles and responsibilites are sometimes not understood. This just makes that a non excuse when you can assign a team vs. an individual.

Shaun Hunt

Please add my company to the list. Without the ability to do true resource planning we are not able to remove our dependence on MS Project. This is the only feature holding my company back from adopting Smartsheet as our Project Management tool. 

1. Smartsheet does not allow multiple resource assignments per task

2. Smartsheet requires an allocation %

3. Smartsheet requires the resource be an account holder (in many cases we manage resources that don't have email addresses so we have to put in fake email addresses)

 

Brenda Strong

I would say that the best possible case would be:

I can assign mutilple resources to any given task

By default, would want the total work for a task to be assigned equally across the people assigned (two people for two days, default would be to assign 16 hours to each)

I can edit the task to assign different hours (or % allocation) to that task over the course of the dates specified. (resource A spend 12 hours over two days, while resource B spends 8 hours over two days on the same task).

I can apply a % complete to the entire task.

Tim Meeks

Any update on this feature?  We will still continue to use SS to do multiple department project status, but I'm about to search for a tool that can better determine resource allocation across multiple projects.  And it pains me to so....

Dan Arnott

Pretty sure that Smartsheet are not interested in adding this functionality. Each week we look to see if there is any progress but they are so busy adding other features, they can't be bothered with adding fundamental project basics. Will see how it goes but likely to not sign our company up with them if they dont listen to user requests for simple features