Add special working day exceptions (not non-working days)

Ramsay Zaki

Our schedule is typically M-F. But, during special events (Go Lives, etc), we will work weekends. Is there a way to specify specific days which would typically be non-working days as being working days? The only way I can think it to set all 7 days as working days and then specify every single weekend except that one weekend as being non-working days but that is really inefficient to do that.

Paul Newcome

You could set up a separate sheet that has two date columns and a checkbox column. The first date column would have every weekend date included. The second date column would use an IF that says if the checkbox is unchecked, pull the date from the first column, otherwise leave blank.

You would check the box for each weekend that you ARE working which would leave the second date column only displaying non-working weekends.

Then in your formulas where you can include holidays, reference this second date column.

Ramsay Zaki

Thanks Paul. Unfortunately, that won't work in the standard Dependency columns on Smartsheet (which uses the official working/non-working setup of the sheet the calculate the End date of a task from the start date).

Paul Newcome

Ah. It isn't ideal, but if you use the above to generate the list of non-working weekends, could you set your working week to 7 days and then copy/paste the list into the settings?

Ramsay Zaki

Yeah... I think that is the route we are going to have to take (in which case I'll just use excel to mass create the "non working weekend" list).

Paul Newcome

Feel free to Submit a Product Enhancement Request when you are able. Being able to specify special working days would definitely be pretty handy especially in situations like yours.

John Hanrahan

Bump. Any update on this? Is it backlogged as a future enhancement? This would definitely be handy. I'm in the same scenario as the original poster, creating a release schedule for a GoLive, and want to make the GoLive weekend an exception.

kjr83841

The solution is so cludgey - a sheet administrator should have the option to over-ride the non-working day setting for a particular line. This is a very common situation where you actually PLAN to work on what would be a standard non-working day.

Kurt Robohm

You may be able to set tasks to occur by using the elasped time duration. Here's a bit of info on subject:

• Elapsed time (lead with an e) indicates elapsed time duration (e3d, e5h, e3.5d, etc.). A task with a duration in elapsed time ignores non-working time. The task will start and end in the amount of time specified regardless of working day length and non-working days in the sheet.