Assign To a list of people - one per entry

Shelley Hose

I'm trying to assign a new incoming task to 1 person, from a list, in order of the list. How can I do that?

Paul Newcome

Ok. You will need to insert a column on the List of Resources and use a formula that counts how many times they have been used.

=COUNTIFS({Task Sheet Resource Column}, @cell = Resource@row)

Then on the task list column, you would use something like this to pull the next in line from top to bottom:

=INDEX({Resource List Resource Column}, MATCH(MIN({Resource List Count Column}), {Resource List Count Column}, 0))

Paul Newcome

Are you able to provide more detail and possibly some screenshots of what you have alongside manually entered "mock" data that shows what you are wanting to accomplish?

Shelley Hose

I have a list of resources that get assigned a task as they are entered via a form. The form creates incoming tasks.

There are 8 resources, and they get assigned to a task based on a certain order (ie, Bob, Joe, Sam, Mary and we start with assigning Bob first, then another task comes in gets assigned to Joe, and so on...).

Does this help?

Paul Newcome

That is very helpful. That's what I thought you were meaning but wanted to be sure.

Is the list of resources on a separate sheet?

Shelley Hose

yes it currently is on a separate sheet

Paul Newcome

Ok. You will need to insert a column on the List of Resources and use a formula that counts how many times they have been used.

=COUNTIFS({Task Sheet Resource Column}, @cell = Resource@row)

Then on the task list column, you would use something like this to pull the next in line from top to bottom:

=INDEX({Resource List Resource Column}, MATCH(MIN({Resource List Count Column}), {Resource List Count Column}, 0))

Staylo95

Hi all,

I just implemented this in a sheet. Very similar situation with a list of staff on one sheet and list of tasks on the other. Main difference is I want to assign someone when a status is changed to ready. So I have a bunch of rows and when they are ready I want it to assigned people in order.

The issue I'm having is that every time I refresh the person assigned changes to the next person with the lowest number. Has anyone encountered this?

Staylo95

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/360009#Comment_360009

Never mind, I found this solution and it worked for my use case: https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/81780/random-assignation