Functions for predecessors

Patrick Bridges

Are there Smartsheet functions for enumerating the predecessors of a row?

I've been prototyping SmartSheets for managing a pretty sizeable research project (multiple FTEs over several years), potentially replacing Asana for group project management. The reporting is nice, as is the combination of spreadsheet, gantt, card, and resource views. The main thing I'm missing is the ability to show, particularly in the card view, all of tasks whose predecessors have been completed and are available for work. It's something I and my staff does on a regular basis in Asana, and for the large planned-out research projects my Center runs, it's basically essential for how we work and I cannot find a way to do it easily in SmartSheets.

If there was a function for enumerating predecessors, I could simply COUNTIF the number of non-Completed predecessors, and make a row available for work once the predecessors are all Completed. Then I could set up a filter in the Card View to show cards assigned to me that are available for work. This seems like pretty essential functionality to make predecessors useful, but I cannot find a way to do it. Is this possible or planned in the near future?

Mike Wilday

Predecessors in Smartsheet are more focused around date rather than completion, although what you are asking about makes a lot of sense and would be useful to know. 

Without giving it a ton of thought, you could create an IF statement that checks through all your predecessors and ensures they are complete. Or if the rows are dependant on the one above it, and everything is sequential, then you could do a simple formula to indicate if the item before it is completed. 

I do this for our course development process. The formula checks a couple rows in the process and reports on whether specific predecessors are complete or not... See the screenshot for an example. 

Let me know if you want more specific on how this was done.