Create Task Start and Finish Dates with Mouse in Gantt?

JohnA

Is there a way to create start and finish dates in the Gantt chart view by simply clicking/dragging on the Gantt chart calendar? It seems the only way to initially create a start/finish date is by using the Start column and clicking on a date on the calendar that appears. This is clunky and it would be much easier to just click on the actual Gantt chart. Is this not possible?? Thanks!

Brett Evans

JohnA,

 

You can adjust an existing date with the mouse.  With out the date there initilally, there  is no UI object to grab.

JohnA

Thanks very much for the info.

 

That seems like very stupid interface design. Why would you be able to only manipulate an object on the chart and not create it? Especially when all calendar software interfaces now work that way. 

Brett Evans

You can always request feature enhancements here.  I'm sure other commmunity members might be looking for the same thing.

Victor van R

I normally create multiple bars in the Gantt charts by selecting some start and end date and dragging them down in the sheet. I then move the bars to the right position with the mouse and adjust dates by making larger of smaller. 

 

This works pretty quick. 

John Hammond

JohnA, Gantt charts are used to show a graphical timeline of data from your grid to help illustrate a project schedule. The grid populates the Gantt chart. The Gantt chart does not populate the grid. This is how other Gantt charts work, such as in MS Project and I wouldn’t call it a "very stupid interface". It is pretty quick to add a date to your grid. You don’t even need to use the calendar picker, you can just type in dates. For example: typing a 5 will turn into 9/5/15 (the 5th day of the current month) 9/10 will turn into 09/10/15 (the 10th day of the 9th month of the current year).  

JohnA

Brett: Thanks. I'll suggest that.

 

Victor: Thanks. That's a good workaround.

 

John: Thanks for your comment but I disagree. In Smartsheet the Gantt chart is highly dependent on the grid and actually does populate it with changes you make in the Gantt GUI (for example adding a dependancy populates the predecessor column). So it makes no sense to me why you wouldn't be able to simply click and drag in the Gantt chart to create Stand and Finish dates. This certainly seems stupid to me: the feature is incompletely implimented. The project I am trying to plan out is multi-year with many dependancies and exact dates aren't really that important. So it's frustrating to have to keep entering dates that actually don't matter and are going to get immediately changed as soon as a dependancy is applied. It's extra steps which are dumb. In OmniPlan for example a default GUI object is created when you create a task. Much easier. Victor's work around should work though, basically a hack to do the same thing. 

John Hammond

I understand what you are saying. However, you are either adding dates that "dont matter" to the grid or the Gantt (as you would like). If you are getting the dates based on predecessors (using dependencies), wouldnt it be just as easy to type in the predecessor row number on the new row? This would create the dependency, add the predecessor value, and add the date and all you have to do is type one number in a cell and press enter. Do you think this method would save you some time? 

Andrew Harrison

In evaluating several online gantt tools that all allow you to create tasks by click/dragging in the gantt area (i.e. teamgantt, tomsplanner), I was baffled by the lack of this usabilty feature in smartsheet ... it's much more intuitive to sketch out a draft project plan this way ...

 

Our main criteria are around having a good UI with speed and ease of use (followed by collaboration and sharing) - smartsheet is fast and easy to use and does lots of things I like, apart from this missing feature. I spent a while hunting for the option to switch it on!

 

When comparing the best tools for us, the workarounds suggested above won't give a great impression if I had to explain them to anyone.

 

Whilst we're on the subject of using mouse actions in the gantt area - click and drag to select multiple bars for moving would be nice, as would the ability to drag a group by the container bar (the fact you can't do this currently even though the group bar has a select state and mourse cursor change identical to the task bar seems like another strange omission).