Best Practices in a large project

Lainie Franklin

I am new to Smart Sheet (and loving it!) I am working with our annual meeting planning which includes everything from location search, contract signing, registration, etc. etc. 

 

I can't decide whether this is all one sheet or whether it should be divided into several sections with subtasks. I have played with a bit in linking sheets but of course predessor row numbers don't work because they are in different sheets.  I have played with it in terms of setting up different sheets for pre-conference, on-site and post conference (which is what we had in the past in an excel sheet). I see value in all these ways and wonder if someone has experience with this. 

 

Any advice you can give or is there an article/video I'm missing in terms of helping me to set this up? 

 

Thanks so much for your input. I look forwarding to collaborating with you!

 

Lainie Franklin 

 

JamesR

It really depends on the size of the project i.e. number of rows and columns, the number of editors etc.

 

Have a read here:

https://www.smartsheet.com/solutions/project-management

 

Jef Forward

Lainie, 

 

I agree with JamesR, depends on size of project.  I will tpically make that decision based on how easy it will be for other shared user to navigate the sheet. The Parent Child relationship can also influence this decision. 

 

If you do break it into three sheets, you can organize by folder and also link any kick off dates between sheets.  Also, take a look at the roll up videos.  I dont have a link, but it is easy to find in the video section.  Hope this was helpfull.

Sally Mainprize

Lainie,

 

We are an event managemnt company that uses Smartsheet for all our project timelines, budgets, etc.  For event project managment, we have pre and post event tasks in the same sheet. For on-site at an event, we use a separate sheet because the layout and functionality has to be so different. (We work paper-free on site!).

 

By using the parent/child rows effectively, along with the reports feature, we find we can stay very organized with conferences with over 300 tasks and attendee size of over 2,000.

 

If you'd like to contact me, I'd be happy to share our tips and tricks to help a fellow meeting planner! Feel free to reach out smainprize@gogather.net.