Integrate Master Schedule

Pamela

Hi all -

We are really struggling with Smartsheet's project schedule capabilities. We were originally led down the path by the Smartsheet employee aligned to our implementation hours to create one sheet (which is now 5K lines and growing). We cannot see bunching of activities, overlapping activities within a timeline, critical path, etc. easily. We have created some reports but it is unwieldly to have some many reports.

Has anyone found a solid solution to overcome the lack of successor activities?

How do you see and compare downstream impact of schedule changes easily?

Has anyone broken a master sheet down into smaller sheets with linkage? was it successful? I assume you need to remove the predecessor functionality from the sheet you linking dates.

Any tips on seeing critical path more clearly or schedule compression views?

James Keuning

Opinion from a sympathetic peer: Smartsheet has a lot of features that strict project management software does not. The programs that do a great job of scheduling don't also have the capability to whip up a quick budget table or contact list. Of course, Smartsheet's "collaborators are free" model also makes it attractive.

And I can understand how Smartsheet staff convinced you that a thing will do what you need, when it actually won't do what you need.

So, until someone comes here with the answer, know that you aren't alone.

Oh - and our scheduling guy uses MS Project for schedules. I keep a "Master" in Smartsheet, but it is just milestones, and we update it manually. This keeps it accessible for our organization while we do the heavy lifting in Project.