Will we ever be able to assign a task to multiple resources?

Is there any update on when this feature will be implemented? I cannot believe it is still not possible to assign a task to multiple resources.

We are going to need to move to another site soon if this issue is not resolved. It seems crazy that after 12 years, this essential feature still does not exist, while something as useless as Facebook Chat does.

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Comments

Chris McKay

Hi Jesse,

I hear you: https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/smartsheet-limitations

Kind regards,

Chris McKay

Mike Wilday

Rumors are that this is in the works.

BForce

This has been requested repeatedly and is a serious roadblock to me using Smartsheet on a regular basis. In an architectural firm, It is absolutely essential for us to be able to assign more than one person to a project task. No, we cannot use sub-tasks - the point is to simplify.

Without that simple feature, there is no point tracking our projects in Smartsheet specifically - I can do that in Google Sheets or Trello for free and generate a calendar that keeps track of the start and end of tasks and who is assigned. What I like about Smartsheet is a very simple thing: indentation - I think it's the most elegant implementation I've seen in a long time - from the keyboard shortcuts to the formulas, that feature is Perfect. That's the only reason I'm sticking around: that feature shows me they can do things right.

Smartsheet, please acknowledge the issue at least - explain some of the challenges that allow Trello or MS Project to do it but not you. You don't have a Roadmap so it's hard to tell what you're focusing on and if that's even on your radar...even if I see it being requested at least once a day...

Chris McKay

Hi Mike,

What frustrates me no end is the prioritisation of items that nobody seems to have requested (seriously, Facebook Chat?) over bugs, holes in functionality or frequently requested enhancements (some stretching back years). Someone in the Product Team is indulging.

Kind regards,

Chris McKay

Mike Wilday

Agreed.

Jesse L

I completely agree. I can't imagine anyone who wanted or will even use the new Facebook feature. The fact that they have been working on making Smartsheet look nicer while it still lacks basic features that are essential to most companies is mind blowing.

Luke O

Hear Hear!

I have to use the most ridiculous workarounds just to make Smartsheets usable.

Hopefully someone from Smartsheets get a clue and makes this feature their highest priority.

Daniel Stein

Thanks all for the feedback, and we hear you. The ability to assign tasks to multiple people is a priority for us, and we are actively working on it. Because this capability touches many aspects of the product, it's a significant development effort, and we should be able to give an update later this year as we get closer to delivery.

In the meantime, as you are probably aware, there are a couple of alternative approaches that customers use:

Add sub-tasks indented beneath the parent task, and assign each sub-task to a different person. This can be useful when you want specific tracking and accountability, with a single person responsible for each part of a task.
Add multiple columns to track different people associated with a task. This can be useful in situations where the people have different roles, or you want to set up different notification rules for different people.

Please keep the feedback coming.

Best regards,

Daniel

Mike Wilday

We use Daniel's second suggestion to add a new contact column. However, I've heard that adding new contact columns won't populate the resources data to determine resource allocation.

But it will allow multiple assignees to a task and notifications can be set up to go to both columns.

Chris McKay

Hi Daniel,

Honestly, your Product Team need to actively work on it with everything you have. This, fixing dates, adding baselines and all the other things that make up a PPM are important. These workarounds just make the solutions we implement more complex and prone to breaking. In short, we're standing in front of a platform that makes us look incompetent at times.

Please don't tell us you are listening if you ignore what we're telling you is important and spend time developing unwanted modules like Facebook Chat (I ask once again where the need for this was determined). There are so many useless or half-baked deliverables that keep popping up. Apart from Facebook Chat, you can lump the UX re-design, User Profiles, the poorly implemented Slack module, shifting the colour palette hues etc.

While they seem small, they take up dev ops bandwidth that could have been devoted to implementing fixes to the things your customers want earlier.

I cannot speak for everyone else, but I've almost had enough. Later this year? If the UTC date issue is not resolved and project baselines and multiple resources are not implemented by the end of August, I will be making a recommendation that my company does not renew our Smartsheet agreement.

We already have O365 subscriptions, use Power BI and SharePoint extensively and can implement Project Server Online to cover the Smartsheet Control Center gap.

Kind regards,

Chris McKay

Apologies to the OP for hijacking this thread somewhat, but I wanted to illustrate what I was referring to above.

As per the attached image, dates are all over the place. Especially for non-US customers.

The image shows:

a dashboard report widget showing today's date as Wednesday last week and in a US date format (MM/DD/YY)
the underlying report showing the same dates and format
the Gantt sheet I had to create (because Smartsheet made the decision to force grey task bars for parent tasks). Once I load this sheet, the Finish column updates to the 14th of May (today's date). Row 10 in the Finish column uses =TODAY() and Row 10 in the Phase column employs ="Today - " + LEFT($Finish10, 8) to create the green text label
back into the underlying report, you can see the Finish value has updated for the last row and because there is no 14th month, Smartsheet has finally decided that an International date format (DD/MM/YY) is more appropriate.
My Time Zone and Regional Preferences clearly showing GMT +10 and a DD/MM/YY date format

This highlights 2 key flaws with the platform. One is that the dashboard report widget relies on a push to update the report (i.e. I need to refresh the data in the underlying sheet) and the insistence of Smartsheet defaulting to a US date format even when I've specified my time zone and date format preferences.

I have had numerous business stakeholders question why their dates are out (e.g. 09/05/18 becomes 05/09/18) or show a date from last week until they refresh their sheets (of which they may have dozens.

You can see why I'm frustrated that development resources are being devoted to priorities that none of your customers have asked for instead of fixing bugs (not enhancements) like this. The fact that I've been asked to submit an enhancement request for things like this (that you're aware of) is really adding to my frustration. This is not an enhancement. It's a basic feature that does not work. If I cannot trust the dates, then the platform is useless!

Just get on with fixing what is wrong with the platform before you even worry about what enhancements to prioritise (another discussion entirely).

Andrée Starå

Hi,

Yes, assigning multiple people to a task is now available.

Please see the attached link/screenshot for more information.

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/518335-assigning-people-to-a-task

I hope this helps you!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

Hi all,

We're pleased to announce that you can now quickly & easily assign tasks to multiple people. To do so, check the new "Allow multiple contacts per cell" checkbox in any contact column. The cells in that column will then allow up to 20 people to be added.

You can still leave that option unchecked when you only want a single person to be assigned to a task at a time.

Adding multiple contacts to a cell is useful not only for assigning people, but also for other scenarios where you want to associate multiple stakeholders with a row. For example, you might want those people to receive notifications when the row changes, or you may want them to appear in reports and filters.

For some projects, you may want to add 2 contact columns: one for the primary owner, and another for additional team members.

We welcome you to try it out and let us know what you think.

- Daniel

Benjamin PLAIRE

That's awesome but next step is to allow report to understand that because for all the sheet which I allow multiple contact, all the tasks disappear from my report

Best,

Benjamin.

Andrée Starå

Hi Benjamin,

It's because the columns are treated as two different types of columns so right now you have to enable the new column in the report when you change the column setting to "Allow multiple contacts per cell"

Look here for more information:

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/thank-you-we-can-now-assign-multiple-contacts-column

I hope this helps you!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

Benjamin PLAIRE

Hi Andrée,

That's exactly what I was looking for!

Thanks a lot!

Benjamin.

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