Compare/Track planned dates vs actual dates

Ivana

Hello,

I would like to find the best way to track our time slippage in projects. Each project (sheet) in Smartsheet is essentially a big timing plan. However, things don't often go to according to original plans, and the dates have to unfortunately change often. I would like to be able to track how these dates changed, so I can then plot them out in the report (original vs actual dates, but ideally also all the versions in between).

Ideally, I would like to present my project time slippage like in the image below.

One way I was thinking of doing this was to pull up information from the "cell history" log. Can this info be used in Smartsheet reports? Or dashboards?

I would really appreciate any tips on this.

Thank you!

Paul Newcome

The cell history cannot be directly accessed via a formula or through a report. The API MIGHT be able to help with that, but I am not familiar enough with it to be sure.

 

The best thing I can recommend is to create a metrics sheet. Your columns would be the dates you are wanting to display. The rows would be the tasks. You could then set up an alert or reminder to go in on each of those dates and copy/paste from the task sheet to the appropriate column in the metrics sheet. You could then run your time differences from these columns since you now have access to the historical data.

Ivana

Hi Paul,

 

Thank you for your reply. I like your idea about creating a metrics sheet. It is a bit manual, but it would likely solve the traceability issue for now, and I could plot my graph.

Of course, if there was an automatic way of recalling plan history...

Thanks again for your time and help!

Paul Newcome

Yes. It is unfortunately more manual than automated. You definitely have a good idea though. Feel free to Submit a Product Enhancement Request.