Automatic Predecessor Adjustment

ryan.diamond55371

Hey All!

I have a question about how to have predecessors or just tasks in a schedule to automatically update when they are moved in the schedule. I am trying to create a production schedule for our Sheet Metal shop and it is created with the fabrication packages released from the Eng Dept. Sometimes the schedule needs to be adjusted based on new priorities that can be dictated from Field staff or completion of other tasks. The goal is that the Shop manager will be able to A) Create a 2 to 3 week look ahead for the company, and be able to adjust the schedule by dragging a ''Release'' and dropping it in the schedule and have the predecessors update accordingly. Thank you in advance for the community's help on this!  

Andrée Starå

Hi Ryan,

Can you describe your process in more detail and maybe share the sheet(s) or some screenshots? That would make it easier to help. (share too, andree@getdone.se)

Happy New Year!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

JamieRH

I am interested to hear what you find out as I am in a similar predicament with our schedule! 

ryan.diamond55371

Here is a snippet of what it would potentially look like. The issue i have right now is the predecessors stay linked to what ever line is above them regardless of where you shift the task to. I need the order of tasks to be in the order I arrange them without having to update the predecessor cell or cells every time.

Andrée Starå

Hi Ryan,

I've completely missed your post. Did you get a solution set up?

Have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

Andrée Starå

Hi Jamie,

I've completely missed your post. Did you get a solution set up?

Have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

Jon Wilbur Tan

Oh my God. I'm quite disappointed to read this. Two people have already raised this concern since 2019!

This is very valid and is a standard for any kind of gantt chart software. I was messaging support regarding this issue just prior.

1. Missing Dark Mode
2. Flakey keyboard support. On iPad Pro it keeps disappearing. Solution currently is to keep tapping on other cells or to quit and relaunch the app. Terrible.
3. Auto updating of predecessor numbering as these other people have mentioned. Numbering SHOULD always automatically change. Predecessors SHOULD always be linked to a Task Row and that Task Row SHOULD be movable to any numbering or slot within the schedule. This will cause the Predecessor slot to change numbering automatically. Like for example, if it was on slot 5 and you added more rows to the sked, and it had to move to slot 8 then everything linked to it as Predecessor needs to change from 5 to 8.

I'm really shocked that this is not understood nor clear after reading the comment. Anyhow, I hope I helped explaining it and that this is solved because any serious software MUST have this feature. Imagine having 10 or more Predecessor dependent tasks! What a nightmare! Kindly have this fixed soonest. It's already more than half into 2020.

EDIT:

For those people like us 3 commenters bewildered by the app behavior. I just discovered that the app currently does do automatic cel identification in Predecessors BUT you have to tap on "update / refresh" icon located on the upper right hand of the screen on iOS. Still bonkers but at least it's there. Hopefully this will be rectified as we can't be expected to keep pressing refresh all the time as we make changes constantly.

Lllllloyd

Jon Wilbur Tan!

I think you will be able to save me a ton of time. I am a master scheduler. I have went to a make to stock plant to an engineer to order shop. They want me to use this smartsheet program, ya know, not too shabby. Limited though. this software is for project work. we have a division in out company that does the big architectural stuff, this is where smartsheet shines for them. This is what I will have to build.

Process flow;

1. blank made from raw material
2. blank backflushes raw material!
3. blank moves to form process
4. form process backflushes blank
5. form part moves to assembly ( WIP )
6. assembly is made
7. backflushed WIP

part is ready to ship

all of the part movement needs to move to QC for check in the flow at some point.

I would hate to make an access database for all of this. I have done it before and it takes a good year to get everything worked out....

JO H

So I am doing this on a PC and cant find a way to make it auto update when I add a new line.

The issue is that I am starting this as a brand new project type and I often add new lines while I learn about the project. To update up to 75 lines is getting silly

StephenP

I am a bit perturbed that SmartSheets does not just use the unique ROWID for predecessors instead of the line number in the Sheets. I have Sheets with thousands of rows in them, and many lines need to have multiple predecessors. We have an "Agile" workflow that means we constantly need to add tasks in the middle of the project. I end up having to go back and spend hours fixing predecessors for a simple task insertion. I may as well use notepad.exe at that point for organization.

Has anyone found a way to get this automatically updating predecessors after row insertions almost 5 years after this has been raised? Any suggestions are welcome.