Given a task, add column to show all tasks that are dependent on it

Yen Pham

The predecessor field is great, but I'd like to for example, be aware of all the downstream dependent tasks that are impacted if the current task finish date is changed.

Stefan

Hi Yen Pham.

what do you mean by "be aware of" ?

In the sheet with all your tasks you can switch to the Gantt view and see all the dependencies of whatever type. Is that what you are looking for?

Hope this helps

Stefan

Yen Pham

Hey Stefan - as in the downstream dependent tasks would show in a column field just like the predecessor field.

I'm aware of the gantt view showing what i'm basically asking for, but it'd be nice to still have a field that simply lists out the dependent tasks. Thanks fo rsharing!

jcswain

In other words, if this task is late, what are all the other tasks that will be impacted? We'd like to see bi-directional dependencies (you have the predecessor column(upstream), now add the dependencies column(downstream)). The Gantt View doesn't work for us, many times the lines cross with others and you cannot follow which task the line is going to. This is especially important for large, complicated projects. The only workaround (which is not an acceptable workaround) is to filter the Predecessor Column for the row number for your task. This is counter productive for large, complicated projects.

Microsoft Project shows both Predecessors and Dependencies, Smartsheet only shows Predecessors. This is a competitive gap.

riffraffgiraffe

Has anyone found an answer to this? I'm experiencing the same thing with a 600+ line item project, which makes the GANTT dependency visibility function almost useless.

I tried to work around this by creating a report where you could choose a primary and see only its dependents, but it would be so much easier to maintain sight of all my other tasks on the same screen.

Stefan

@riffraffgiraffe and @Yen Pham ,

maybe this solution by @Darren Mullen will help you.

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/99144/solution-showcase-determining-if-a-task-can-start-based-on-predecessor-status

Besides predecessors, it also shows successors in a column and I like it.

Hope this helps

Stefan

Darren Mullen

@Stefan Thanks for the mention!

@riffraffgiraffe and @Yen Pham, yes check out my post that Stefan linked to, and let me know if you are interested in learning more.

riffraffgiraffe

Thank you @Stefan for the tip!

@Darren Mullen - I think this is at its core what I'm looking for, but instead of seeing successors (which I believe are essentially predecessor activities just below in serial order?), I'd like to see dependents.

So in your example here, Row 5 is dependent upon Row 4's completion in order to start. In Row 4, I would like to be able to quickly see that Row 5 is gated on Row 4's completion.

For context, I've organized my sheet non-sequentially. Instead, each team's activities are organized together, and a single activity from one team can have up to 5 finish-to-start dependent tasks across several teams. I know that one could easily see dependent tasks throughout the GANTT view, but that doesn't really work for the sheet I'm building.

Let me know if this makes sense - and thanks for taking a look!

Darren Mullen

@riffraffgiraffe I'd say the example matches your description? In the example row 4 is shown as a gating item to row 5 and row 12 is shown as a gating item because row 12 has row 5 as a "Start to finish" predecessor (not something that is commonly used"

Before gating items completed:

After gating items completed: