Card View by "Assigned To" does not show up when multiple people are assigned a task

Rainer Ng · 03/31/21

Multiple people can be assigned to a task using this method:

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/518335-assigning-people-to-a-task?_ga=2.214211923.579310257.1617124394-908633979.1617124394

Once this is done, however, you will not be able to view by "Assigned To" in Card View. Is there any solution to this?

Genevieve P. · 04/01/21

Hi @Rainer Ng

You are correct, currently Contact List columns that allow for multiple contacts can't be viewed as lanes in Card View. (See Work with Card View Lanes.) Please let our Product Team know about your use-case and feedback by filling in this form, here!

In the meantime, you could have one Contact List column which identifies the primary person assigned to the task (using this as the Lanes in your card view), then set up a second Contact List column which allows for multiple contacts as the rest of the team members. These names wouldn't appear as lanes, but they would still be associated with the task.

Cheers,

Genevieve

Susana Hak · 08/08/22

Hello,

I was wondering if this was ever addressed to allow for "assign to" view if there are multiple contacts. There have been many discussions about this topic and no feedback on whether this was going to be updated? I have submitted my feedback for wanting this feature as well. Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated.

Best,

Susana

Genevieve P. · 08/15/22

Hi @Susana Hak

I don't have an update for when or if multi-select options will become available as Card Lanes. Thank you for submitting your feedback! It will be useful for the Product team to hear how you would like this to work (e.g. do you want each lane to still be one person but have the cards duplicated, or do you want each lane to be its unique combination of people).

Cheers,

Genevieve

Siene Allen · 08/18/22

I think each lane a person with duplicated cards would make it easier to view and manage

Tim Starkey · 10/03/22

I agree with @Siene Allen . The card is duplicated for each assignee's lane. I have outlined our use case below in some detail in hopes that it gets a solution, as I think this would be an exceptional benefit (card view) for our teams.

Our project sheets are set up with three 'contact' columns:

Manager Assigned (single select): One manager is ultimately responsible for the task. We have reports that specifically filter for the tasks assigned to each manager.

Staff Assigned (Multi Select): Multiple staff may be working on the task. We debated a long time about making staff assigned single vs. multi select. Ultimately multi select won out, since the company wanted a simple way to assign tasks to people (instead of creating multiple unique tasks for each individual). We balanced level of detail with ease of use. Those in the Staff Assigned column are calculated into the resource allocation. (Detail on that below)

Followers (Multi-select): No allocation is assigned to this field, but it is used in reports so others can keep tabs on tasks of interest.

We have a simple "My Tasks" report that filters for the current user in any of those three fields, and groups tasks by project. Then each staff can see what tasks they are assigned to (or sharing with other assignees).

Our project sheets are set up as a PROJECT with dependencies (Start, End, Duration, Predecessors). It is also set up to use legacy Smartsheet Resource Management (Staff Assigned column, Allocation Column). There are multiple other columns (budgets, hours assigned, status, comments, etc). For the resource management, in the allocation column we use the following formula:

=IFERROR((Hrs@row / (8 * (Duration@row))) / COUNTM([Staff Assigned]@row), 0)

This adjusts the allocation based on number of staff assigned, hours for the task, and the duration of the task. I only mention the allocation formula for context to show that we have made it work using a multi-contact for staff assigned. In fact everything works great (Manager reports, My Task (staff reports), allocation/workload, etc)

We can live without the grouping by multiselect contact fields in reports, but losing the 'card view' is a real disappointment.

How I would like to see it implemented is having the task (card) duplicated across each assignees lanes. We would combine it with our status column (backlog, in progress, blocked, review, complete, etc) Then in our team meetings, we can pull up the card view. If Task 1, Task 2, Task 3, etc. are assigned to Bill and Janet, each of those card would show up in both of their lanes. Staff could see what tasks are in 'backlog' when they are finished with a task, and pull it over to "in progress", or "blocked" (which flags the task and leads to other automations). They could also remove/add other assignees right from the card view.

Clarissa · 11/18/22

+1 on the suggestion by @Siene Allen and @Tim Starkey

In our organization we have for example a sheet where all projects in our product development department are summarized (just top level, no tasks within the projects). All team members involved in a project are listed in a Contact list column we call "Involved".

To get a quick overview of which team member is involved in how many projects (and if they might need to be removed from some to free time), it'd be so helpful to have the Card View based on the "Involved" Lane.

And as the others suggest, to then have the card duplicated if several people have it assigned.

Is this something that can be developed, @Genevieve P. ?

Messsk · 10/27/23

Is it possible to view by Assigned To in a report's card view?

I'd like to view cards for assignees across multiple sheets/projects in my weekly WIP

RC_SG · 12/05/23

We too have a similar use case as @Tim Starkey, and his solution seems perfect for our needs.

We have a team of installers that we need to assign jobs to, but often multiple installers are assigned to a single job depending on scope. If we use @Genevieve P.'s solution, it'll cause a lot of confusion amongst our installers as who's "Main" and who's "Secondary" as well as preventing the "secondary" installer from seeing what is on their plate at a glance. In addition, if we need to re-assign the secondary installer to another person, this also creates an issue.

Honestly, and I apologize in advance for the shade being thrown, but this is a very basic and well implemented feature in almost unanimously all Card-View based project management software, I am scratching my head as to why this seems to be lacking in Smartsheets which advertises itself as a robust alternative to some of those software.

It's been around 2 years since this topic was posted is there any updates or insight that can be given to us?

Card View by "Assigned To" does not show up when multiple people are assigned a task

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