Presetting Project Start and End date - Missing in Smartsheet

Michele Deo

In Microsoft Project, you can set a project schedule's start and end date and that sets the date range for a project schedule.  I can't see that feature in smartsheet.  This would be nice since a lot of us use templates in our PMOs that we'd like the ability to do this everytime we start up a schedule so the dates pre-fill against the durations and predecessors already entered in the schedule template.

Mike Wilday

Yeah, Smartsheet works off of durations and predecessors. If you have a standard duration for all of your tasks you can set up your own template and just fill in the first or last date (depending on how you set up your dependencies and every task will automatically fill in based on those durations and dependencies. See my example screenshot below. 

Isaac Jose

Hello Michele,

Thanks for your post! Mike is correct, you can definitely setup your project with duration and dependencies so that dates will auto-fill based on key dates that you enter. More information about this can be found in the articles below:

• Creating a Gantt Chart with Dependencies: https://help.smartsheet.com/learning-track/smartsheet-advanced/gantt-chart-dependencies
• Critical Path in Smartsheet: https://help.smartsheet.com/learning-track/smartsheet-advanced/critical-path
• Blog Tips - Creating a Work-Back Schedule: https://www.smartsheet.com/blog/support-tip-work-back-schedule

I hope the above resources will help you accomplish your goals with Smartsheet!

Kind regards,

 

Isaac J

Smartsheet Technical Support