Text vs duration and dependencies

Flight Centre Travel Group L+D

Hello everyone,

I need to create an easy to use sheet that will allow my team to choose a task type from a drop down list that then auto-populates an SLA column and from that works out overallocation of resources.

So far I have tried to do a VLOOKUP from the task type to our SLA times but that comes across as a text entry version and from what I can see this can then not be used to activate dependencies to report on overallocation. 

My next step was to copy the SLA info into another, hidden column to enable dependencies but that did not work either.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to overcome this?

Thank you

Shaine Greenwood

Hello,

There currently isn't a way to use formulas in columns being used for dependencies (such as duration, start date, end date, etc) or resource management (% allocation), OR to automatically assign values to these columns based on data in another column. When you have a moment, please submit a Product Enhancement Request for this using the form under Quick links on the right of the community site to let our Product team know that you'd like to see this feature added to Smartsheet.

You will have to manually copy and paste the values in the duration column in some way—one thing that you might try is to use VLOOKUP to get the value over in a text/number column in your destination sheet, then copy the cell, right-click the duration cell that you want to paste the value into and select Paste Special > Values.

This will only paste the result of the VLOOKUP function.