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Hi Everyone,

I have a complex project that I have developed a project plan in smartsheet. This project has seperate departments working on different tasks throughout various times in the project.

I have created Heirachies as per the department applicable and then their individual tasks.

The issue this causes is visually this is quite difficult for the users. I have created a report builder but was wondering if there is another way we could view this?

Thanks in advance

Kelly

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Comments

Richard Rymill SBP

Kelly

Reports is probably the best way to generate ourstanding "to do lists" for the Departmental users but you can use Filters within your project plan or Multiple filters?

If the To do lists" do not need to be interactive you could automate the output of PDF or Excel versions on a weekly or daily scheduled basis, then users only need to access their LIVE reports to record "job done"?

Would that be any easier?

Chuck Davis

We have a project to use Smartsheet to track the engineering, purchasing and manufacturing tasks required to build a complex piece of industrial equipment. Each piece of equipment consists of up to nine subsystems (each subsystem can have 20 components) and each subsystem requires input from each of the three departments. There is a sheet for each job and each sheet can have 200 or more rows and 40 columns. Each sheet has system and department columns with corresponding drop-down lists.

By hiding the columns they don't care about and filtering on the system and department columns, any user can view only the specific rows and columns they care about. The user can view and work with a very simple set of data instead of the whole sheet.

This simplified view can also be printed using the printer icon in the toolbar at the left side of a sheet.

Tom Zylstra

Hi Kelly,

One suggestion would be to "rotate" your Project Plan in a couple of small ways.

First, instead of horizontally grouping the project tasks by department, you instead grouped the project by "Key Milestones" or phases of the project.

Next create a column of type "Dropdown List" enter in alphabetical oder each department.

Lastly, with the restructured project you can scale to extremely large project sheets and easily via Sheet Filter on the Department column or with Smartsheet Reports give each department it's own "view" of the project and at the same time the Project hierarchies scales even when many departments are involved.

I have attached a screen example, I hope this helps

Tom

department hierarchy.png