What reports are most useful to you?

Terri Pavlovic

I'm looking for some input on what reports you've found most useful. 

 

We've been using Smartsheet for about a month for 12 projects run by 3 PMs.  The project plan functionality is working great.  We are just getting going with reporting.

 

Here are the initial reports I'm planning:

 

- Individual "Look Ahead" Task Lists for each resource

- Overdue Task Report

- Project Roll-Up Report (summary status info on all projects)

 

I'm also looking to do something on resource management, but without effort-based (% allocation) info, it may not be as useful.

 

Any other suggested reports?

 

Tim Meeks

Terri,

 

We use a report to provide a condsolidated Project summary report to our CIO that is pulled weekly from 4 managers' project sheets.  Each IT manager has a host of projects he/she is managing.   The project entry may be just one line or if a large project, may have 4-8 subtasks under the main project row.  (We have a large project being mananaged in another SS that is updated via cell linking back to the manager's report.)

 

Each manager then checks a checkbox on each project he/she wants pulled into the CIO report.  The report runs weekly and only selects those projects checked providing a summary of the fields on each project. 

 

Hope that helps.

 

Tim

Jessica Donald

How are you managing to create an overdue task report?  Is smartsheet able to alert you when a milestone is about to be overdue?

Terri Pavlovic

In my sheets I have a column called "Status".  In that column, I use RYGG (Red-Yellow-Green-Gray) balls to reflect status.  Red status is where the task's end date is > today and the task is not complete.  See https://www.smartsheet.com/blog/support-tip-automate-RYG-balls on how to do this.

 

In the Overdue Task Report, I simply filter for all tasks where status = red.

SashaR

Jessica, it would depend on how you mark a task as overdue! Reports give you a lot of options so it is up to your process. For example, if a task is overdue because the Due Date is in the past and % Complete is not 100%, you can build a report that will show all your tasks that meets that criteria.