Block non-working days for resources?

mdcatlett

Hello! I'm trying to schedule around vacation dates and other non-working days per resource, not for the whole team or whole sheet. How can I block off non-working days for a particular person without doing it 'manually' and messing up the dependencies? 

Thanks for any guidance!

Robert Poddar

Hi mdcatlett

Currently there isn't any option in Smartsheet to mark non-working days at a resource level. This has been a request from the users, but as of now, there isn't any visibility as to when Smartsheet will have this feature. 

The only workaround (which is not the best/cleanest) is to increase the duration of the task and make a note that the resource was on PTO, so that you know the reason of the shift in the plan. 

I feel that this is a critical feature for any project planning software, but not sure why Smartsheet doesn't think so.. 

Chris McKay

Hi mdcatlett,

This is currently not possible in Smartsheet. Unless you want to create an enormously complex web of hidden columns and formulas, the easiest way to do this is to setup another control sheet with each resource name (as a Contact column) and a Start and End date for non-working periods.

Then in your project plan, you'll want to create a validation column that checks whether the resource assigned to a task row has a non-working period specified in your control sheet that falls within the task date range. The formula might look something like this:

=IF(OR(COUNTIFS({Resource Range}, [Assigned To]@row, {Resource Start}, >=Start@row, {Resource End}, <=Finish@row) > 0, COUNTIFS({Resource Range}, [Assigned To]@row, {Resource Start}, <=Start@row, {Resource End}, >=Finish@row) > 0), "Unavailable", "Available")

You could then use conditional formatting to format the row (e.g. red background) when an "Unavailable" period has been selected.

Not ideal I know and the above formula is tough for newbies to understand, but quite frankly if Smartsheet doesn't allow us to even assign multiple resources to a task, I wouldn't put much hope in the overall resource management piece.

Hope this helps.

Kind regards,

Chris McKay