Please let Smartsheet work with time

Ian Cooper

There are several threads on the need for a time tracking feature in Smartsheet. Most of the threads end with helpful, but complex workarounds from some of the Smartsheet Power Users.

While the formulas do help accomplish the mission, I fell like they have allowed Smartsheet to overlook this issue for far too long.

With Smartsheet's project management offerings, you would think native handling of dates and time would be a core feature. Most of the project management could probably get away with calculating to the number of days.

The business I work for has managed to build several complex workflows. In some instances, we need to calculate down to the minute to make sure we are meeting contract requirements. Again, this can be done today, but it is VERY clumsy.

PLEASE build in native date/time handling so we can stop using formulas with multiple nested statements.

Amanda Thacker

Hello, I would be useful if there was a time format option to enter cell data, this would allow us to calculate staff hours using start and finish times. Many thanks.

Stewart Winter

It would be incredibly valuable to add a date/time column (or an independent time column). Currently there is a significant limitation that I cannot track downtime/uptime on equipment down to the hour/minute without manually calculating.

Paul Newcome

@Stewart Winter In the meantime there are formulas that can be used:

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/68947/formulas-for-calculating-time

celtics345

It has been suggested many times before, but integrating time (no more than hourly / half-hourly) is imperative for many companies to function. My company (a large-scale media enterprise) is looking to ween itself off of ScheduAll and I'd like to propose Smartsheet as an alternative. However, since it does not allow for hour-by-hour editing or viewing, that likely won't be a feasible avenue.

Aldrin Sarsaba

I love to calculate the Cycle Time and or Lead Time for all the activities which I converted as my OKR/KPI. However, I can only calculate each item using days but not the time, I would propose to add the date and time on the sheets.

Appreciate your feedback

Jakub Lenczowski

I would like to have possibility to make time calculations. Lack of this possibility caused that I cannot use Smartsheet as a tool i.e. on production floor to measure people's performance.

Paul Newcome

@Jakub Lenczowski If time calcs are the only reason for not using Smartsheet, you can use various solutions linked in on of my above comments while Smartsheet works on getting this implemented.

jappleii

I add my request for this - as well - for Time and Timezone capabilities (esp the ability to allow a user to see what date/time a task would fall on in their timezone!). This is the one feature that makes it difficult (or impossible) to use SmartSheet for our use cases. At this point, we'll have to go back to Google Spreadsheets and individual columns for each user until the ability to work with time and set timezones for various items.

Why is this is a critical need for us?

• We schedule events and projects across multiple Geographies.
• We need to have setup and teardown precisely coordinated between individuals in different regions.
• We need to ensure that any user who has to cover for that individual (might be in a different country) also knows precisely when that task is due in their timezone).
• Missing timezones and building our widgets too early or too late either adds significant, wasted cost to our work, or it causes our customers/users to not have the resources necessary

I note that Start and Finish each have a type of "Date/Time" - so the timezone information must be encoded in the sheet for Time to exist here. However, I can create no column called "Time", "Date/Time", or "Timezone" nor any equivalent variable for such an operation.

Add to this that the Smartsheet FAQ states that the last editor of a sheet changes the sheet's source timezone to their's - this is problematic with PM's across different geographies are concurrently updating a plan and it alters everything about an event or project that requires cross-TZ-coordination.

Brett Wyrick

The users have been asking for this for years. Fingers crossed it gets announced at Engage 2023?

Paul Newcome

This was released a couple of weeks ago.

https://help.smartsheet.com/function/time

jappleii

@Paul Newcome that looks like it's a start on the fix of the issue, then - thank you for the link. But it's still not implemented on a per-task basis that can be used for scheduling tasks in the Gantt chart.

Genevieve P.

Hi all,

Thank you for your continued input and discussion on this thread; every use-case and scenario is helpful to provide context into the type of time-based solutions you need.

As an update for now and as Paul noted, there is a new TIME function that you can use in formulas! Here's the documentation:

https://help.smartsheet.com/function/time

Cheers,

Genevieve

jappleii

Hi, @Genevieve P. ,

Is there any way to use this function to show date/time in the viewer's timezone based on a field which we hard-code both?

The final entry in the linked page is close, but I don't believe it can handle any kind of dependency linking.

Kind Regards,

John

Genevieve P.

Hey @jappleii

Can you provide more details for what you're looking to do? The Time Function can reference one Text/Number time cell and add hours on to that time to display a different timezone in another column, if that's what you're looking for?

Keep in mind the System Date columns (Created and Modified) will display time based on the user's timezone set in their Personal Settings, if that helps.