Tasks that require monthly reporting

Joseph Murray

Hello,

I have looked around and did not find any responses that directly address my issue. We have a contract that requires monthly reporting. In this contract we are responsible for submitting a monthly report each month on the date of the contract award. I was expecting to be able to simply put a predecessor field with a 1 month lag. I found that this is not possible in Smartsheets. I have been manually setting the dates for these reporting tasks. When a contract award data moves or is delayed all of these tasks have to be manually updated.

Is there any way to put a delay in the predecessor field? I was thinking something in the predecessor field like 34FS + DATE(YEAR([Start Date]3), MONTH([Start Date]3) + 1, DAY([Start Date]3)). Clearly this does not work because it produces a date field. I can't seem to put a function like =DATE(YEAR([Start Date]3), MONTH([Start Date]3) + 1, DAY([Start Date]3)) in the [Start Date]10 field.

The actual program tasking is scheduled with predecessors and works well with days and weeks for durations. It is only the required monthly tasks that are based on contract award that is an issue.

Thanks -Joe.

Alejandra

Hi @Joseph Murray,

Have you tried using lag time to represent a period of inactivity between the predecessor and dependent task? For instance, entering 30d into the “Lag (days)” field for a Finish-to-Start dependency causes the dependents to start an additional 30 working days after its predecessor finishes. 

If needed, more information on lag time can be found in our help article: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/765727-enabling-dependencies-using-predecessors

Joseph Murray

That really does not address the issue. The issue is that our reporting is due monthly on the day of the contract award (or the first business day after). Offsetting a lag in days does not address the issue because each month has a different number of days. What I need is to have a milestone task (e.g., "Contract Award") and then subsequently put each monthly report 1 month after the contract award. There may be 15 to 24 monthly reports. It seems like a simple lag issue - that is accommodated in many other project planning systems - but is strangely missing from Smartsheets.

Joe.