SUCCESSOR Formula

Vivien Chong

I am testing the Successor formula that was recently launched. But doesn't seem to get it working.

Dependencies has been enabled. What did I missed out?

I am looking to set up automation to inform successor that their task is ready to get started. Somehow unable to get the formula to work and also to test how to set up the automation.

Anyone who has tried this?

Paul Newcome

It is your quotes. You have the slanted ones which are called "Smart Quotes" which (ironically enough) Smartsheet doesn't recognize as valid characters. Try retyping the formula directly in the sheet, here in the community, or in a text type program such as Notepad" (not Word), and you will see that you get the quotes that are straight up and down (like the quotes here in this comment). That should clear up that particular error for you.

Paul Newcome

It is your quotes. You have the slanted ones which are called "Smart Quotes" which (ironically enough) Smartsheet doesn't recognize as valid characters. Try retyping the formula directly in the sheet, here in the community, or in a text type program such as Notepad" (not Word), and you will see that you get the quotes that are straight up and down (like the quotes here in this comment). That should clear up that particular error for you.

Vivien Chong

Thanks @Paul Newcome didn't realised my "quote" is slanted. :D

Now I manage to get this done.

But still couldn't relate how this is going to help me to alert the next person in line so they can get ready for their task.

Paul Newcome

Instead of referencing the Task Name, what if you pulled in the (for example) Finish Date for the previous task, subtracted one day from that (to get the day before), then set up an automation to run on this new date?

Chris Mondeau

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/308351#Comment_308351

I'd be interested to see some other examples on the successor; do you have any samples worked out referencing other columns that return more than just the successor row number?

Paul Newcome

@Chris Mondeau I had forgotten about this particular thread when I started my own SUCCESSORS thread. I just posted another solution where we are able to output the next task names, but I like @Vivien Chong's version better. I was just building off of the pre-existing solution that I already had in place.

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/84257/successors-testing

Awalshga

This is a super-helpful thread @Paul Newcome . I think I'm trying to do the inverse of what @Vivien Chong was doing. I am showing predecessors and successors on each row. If the user sets a task to N/A (i.e. not used for that project but doesn't necessarily want to delete it from the plan) and that task has successors I use conditional formatting to grey out the row and highlight the successor value so the user knows they need to adjust their plan accordingly. I also direct them to zero out the duration (not shown). See below.

In this example, if I change the predecessor value in row 24 to be 22 (the previous active row since 23 is N/A), the value in the Successors column in row 23 clears but the yellow highlight remains.

I have worked with reordering my conditional formatting rules which makes me wonder if the data type on the Successors column which uses the formula =JOIN(SUCCESSORS([Task Name]@row), ",") makes it not truly blank even though no data exists. Any thoughts on how I can get that yellow shading to go away if no successors exist?