Scheduling with Fixed Capacity Resources

Trisha Martinez

I need to schedule project tasks by resource availability. All of the smartsheet resource management tools appears to assume there is always a resource available for the task, so the advice is simply to schedule another resource when one is overbooked. I actually view resource availability as a constraint. Specifically, I will have three agile teams to allocate large pieces of the project.

How would you recommend doing this in SmartSheets? Assuming I have the list of tasks, the duration, the overall project start date, and the dependencies -- how would you schedule the items so that only three items are assigned at any given point in the timeline?

Isaac Jose

Hi Trisha,

Thanks for posting! It sounds like you need to make sure that there's never more than three overlapping tasks or rows on any given day. Is that correct?

My first thought was to use a formula to count the number of tasks that occur for any given day, however this wouldn't work because the formula would only take into account the Start and End Date of each task, but not any of the days in between.

If you switch your sheet or report to Gantt or Calendar view (Grid, Gantt, Card, and Calendar Views), you may be able to visualize the number of tasks occurring on a given day since there is a task bar for each row. If three tasks are scheduled on a given day, that day in the Calendar view will show three task bars (along with the primary column/task name value).

To make things easier to visualize in the Calendar or Gantt View, you can also use Conditional Formatting to color the task bars based on which team is responsible for each task (Change the Color of Task Bars | Apply Formatting Automatically with Conditional Formatting Rules).

If none of these are adequate for your use case, then I recommend submitting a product enhancement request with the link to the right. Additionally, consider evaluating resource management platform, 10,000ft.

• Webinar: Elevate Your Resource Management With 10,000ft
• Learning Track: Getting Started with 10,000ft

I hope this helps!

Isaac J

Smartsheet Technical Support

Isaac Jose

Hi Trisha,

Thanks for posting! It sounds like you need to make sure that there's never more than three overlapping tasks or rows on any given day. Is that correct?

My first thought was to use a formula to count the number of tasks that occur for any given day, however this wouldn't work because the formula would only take into account the Start and End Date of each task, but not any of the days in between.

If you switch your sheet or report to Gantt or Calendar view (Grid, Gantt, Card, and Calendar Views), you may be able to visualize the number of tasks occurring on a given day since there is a task bar for each row. If three tasks are scheduled on a given day, that day in the Calendar view will show three task bars (along with the primary column/task name value).

To make things easier to visualize in the Calendar or Gantt View, you can also use Conditional Formatting to color the task bars based on which team is responsible for each task (Change the Color of Task Bars | Apply Formatting Automatically with Conditional Formatting Rules).

If none of these are adequate for your use case, then I recommend submitting a product enhancement request with the link to the right. Additionally, consider evaluating resource management platform, 10,000ft.

• Webinar: Elevate Your Resource Management With 10,000ft
• Learning Track: Getting Started with 10,000ft

I hope this helps!

Isaac J

Smartsheet Technical Support

Trisha Martinez

Thanks for the hint about coloring coding the bars for each team. That helps quite a bit!