Forced dates when dependency is enabled

We are working to importa 1800 line project plan into smartsheet and have run into a dabilitating problem with the dates.

What looks to be happening is that the “Duration” and “predecessors” fields are completely driving the dates for the tasks. Anything with a predecessor is automatically forcing the start date to be the day immediately after the predecessor completes, whereas this is not necessary true for all tasks.

MS Project:

However, with this turned off, none of the dates have any dependencies, including the roll-up dates. So I am forced to choose between giving up the predecessors functionality, or giving up the date dependency, which causes each date field to act independent and would not be feasible to maintain.

Any suggestions or solutions for this?

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Sheets

Gantt View

Project Management

Importing and Exporting

Enhancement Request

Comments

Shaine Greenwood

Hello,

You're correct in that the dependencies functionality in Smartsheet works such that the End Date on the Predecessor task drives the start date of dependent tasks. You can add lag to your dependent tasks to push their start dates out: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/765727-enabling-dependencies-using-predecessors#lagtime

cmsherer

Just to confirm, in theory, in order to make our dates match, we would need to go through all 1800 rows and add the correct number of lag days so the dates populates correctly?

Shaine Greenwood

Correct.

We don't have a way to maintain the dependency relationship in Smartsheet and have tasks start on a date that isn't immediately following the Predecessor task without adding lag days. I'll get your vote down for functionality to create a dependency relationship that doesn't drive the dependent task's start date or end date to our enhancement request list for further consideration.

cmsherer

Thank you for submitting. We did some additional testing with the lag time functionality this morning, and this creates an issue on the other end where if a precessor shifts 3 days, the successor also shifts three days, even if there is a 2 month lag between the items. This doesn't seem logical and makes it impossible to manage a project of this size and complexity in the tool.

P Aughey

Agree!

Shaine Greenwood

Lag times are static—as currently Smartsheet is centered around the model of Predecessor tasks driving the dates on their dependent tasks.

@P Aughey—I've got your vote down for this as well!

DM06

Is there a way to drag the following task and have the lag time update? Would like to drag a dependent task back to a week later, but doing so breaks the dependency. We often sit together and go down the gantt chart and adjust start/finish days visually. Having to enter a date manually for each one would be a hassle.

M-Fries

Please also add my vote - For large scale projects with complex dependencies there needs to be a way to lock down certain dates even if they have dependencies.

Kwalker

Has this been resolved? I would really like to keep using Smartsheet, but this feature has me shying away until there is an option to disable lag time dependencies on individual tasks and/or disable globally. Changing the predecessor lag time is such an inefficient and nonintuitive method to change the dependent task dates.

JustinB

I'm looking for a status on this as well. Other web based project management solutions simply have a setting to turn this feature on and off as needed. Is this something that can be implemented? It could be a global toggle. Toggle is on and lag time stays constant. Toggle off and lag times recalculate when you adjust a predecessor.

Or it could be a checkbox option.

Seems like a pretty reasonable function, regardless of how it is implemented.

Sandra_Perez

Hi fellow Smartsheet users. We just came accross the same issue and i was wondering if the solution is to allow the desactivation of the dependency by row not to the complete sheet. It is like in MS Project that you have the option to say if the task is manually scheduled or auto-scheduled and still you have the option to enter a predecessor.

I will appreciate if you can update us about when this will be resolved.

thank you!

a.wolfe61356

Is there any word on if this has been solved?

Brendon McHugh

Would be good to have this feature

Becca Grunbaum

Has this now been resolved?? I would be interested in the outcome as would need to lock specific milestone dates to avoid movement when there is slippage with a tasks that is is dependent on.