Task Management

I have a question in regards to individual task management. How are people with several on-going projects tracking their individual "active" tasks?

I think just a report with ALL tasks is too cumbersome, as many may be future tasks with not action yet required.

While requiring that ALL sheets contain the same column titles would be the only way to extract tasks based on dates, and unfortunately different sheet owners may use different names.

I just want my team to all have a view where they can see what tasks are currently active, when it is due, and what project it is associated with. (status and other bells/whistles would be nice, but not essential).

Thanks!

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Comments

JohnHinkle

This sort of thing is exactly what reports work great for. I understand your concern about different column names across sheets but reports will do 100% of what you are looking for. It can show all the active tasks assigned to a user and will stay up to date and always show the correct data and tasks.

I would suggest educating your team on sheet standards - at least for date column names and how you mark tasks as active. You could even create a template that can be shared with your team and ask them to build sheets, starting with the template.

While it may take a little bit of time to initial set this up (especially if your team has different names for different column types), I think it would be unwise to dismiss reporting as it will do exactly what you are looking for.

Brian Smith

I would love to see an example of some report builders showing how you are defining 'active' tasks across multiple sheets with varying column titles.

Thanks!

JohnHinkle

Hi Brian, I may not have been 100% clear - I was suggesting you would need to set a standard across your sheets for marking a task as active (which includes common column name/type).

How you want to mark tasks as active is up to you and your internal processes. It could be anything from a checkbox, RYG balls, % complete, dates, or any combination of those (example: if the task is less than 100% complete and the end date is in the future).

Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions!