Flexibly managing resources for assignment - by logical project groups

John Peterson-RST

a - We manage a constantly evolving list of projects, with each project being managed by 1-3 Smartsheet Users (our PMs), and tasks being assigned to one of the 15-45 resources (people, -vendors, managers in the customer's company (not users).

b - The list of contacts is unique to each project

c - The 1-3 PMs need to be able to quickly assign tasks people from this larger list

d - We don't want to see the contacts from our old projects - we want to create a new group that is specific to that project only.

e - I'd like the lead PM to be able to bulk enter the resources for a specific project into our smartsheet account so that all of our PMs can see/use them, then add then to a group that identifies them as useful for this specific project/sheet

 

e - I can't figure out anything even close in Smartsheet

f - MS Project does this easily

 

Help!

 

- John

Richard Rymill SBP

John

While Smartsheet is not Project or Project Server which are the tools we used before Smartsheet ,so you are right there are some things that Smartsheet cannot do that Project can. However the ease of collaboration, user friendliness and visibility offered by Smartsheet are so much better, that we often hear clients say, that if Smartsheet can do 80%  to 90% of what Project does and do it better, then it is the right tool for the job and the missing 10% we can figure out in other ways. 

What you do need to do is design your workflows IN Smartsheet ways, not try to convert them from project. This needs a through understanding of both systems to design the new layout. i'm sure 80 to 90% of what you seek is quite possible. 

I'm sure you can do this if you take time to understand SS functionality first, but if you prefer to get moving and have some budget you can devote to it then.... 

My colleague Craig Williams is highly skilled at exactly this work, so if you would like to discuss your needs, I can arrange that? Let us know where you are and when you are free? 

Hope that helps?  

RichardR

 

 

Sanjay Cherubala

One potential quick solution in your case is to ignore Smartsheet's built-in resource assignment and roll your own (albeit limited) method. It goes something like this:

- Add a column in your plan titled "Resource" (or something similar)
- Change the column type to "Dropdown List"
- Paste the list of resources into the Values area of the dropdown list. Make sure you only have one resource per row - this can be done by your lead PM when the plan is initially drafted
- Your other PMs can use this pre-curated list to select the right resource for the task

 

There are a few issues with this approach, however:

- You can only assign one resource per task

- This will not feed into Smartsheet's automatic resource tracking/reporting mechanism