How to view duplicate tasks at once to help with task assignment?

Bradhickswa · 07/25/22

Hi SS Community,

This question is in regards to a project I'm working on which involves assembling and testing tools that are used in quality assurance with our products. We are building these tools for two locations, one locally and one overseas. We have tasks that occur twice (for each location build) and our goal is to not double up on task assignment and when they are assigned. We would like to stagger these tasks from one another to make the process easier. Is there a way to view any duplicate tasks, so we can adjust them on the schedule and stagger by a day or two in between them? I've look on previous posts in relation to this, but nothing came up that seemed to fit what I'm looking for.

Thanks for the help!

Brent Wilson · 07/26/22

The Easiest way I found to find duplicates is with a helper column that counts say a Task Description

Something as simple as =COUNTIF([Task]:[Task], =Task@row) will count the number of times the Exact Task Description is seen in the column.

So if it has "Inspect Chamfer on Collet" twice it would return 2. and hence you know it is a duplicate

Sometimes you need to split things out.

Ex: I have 13 projects all with a ship date. The problem is that they are loaded into our schedule as 4050 - Shipping, 4043 - Shipping, and 4042 - Shipping. These are unique and Smartsheet does not see the shipping Task as duplicates because it has the jobID in the Task

So when I created the sheet I created a Job number Column, a Task Column and then a Description Column

So I have something like this

JobID : 4050

Task : Shipping

Task Description : = [JobID]@row + " - " + [Task]@row which would result in "4050 - Shipping"

This way I can filter just on one job quickly and also just on shipping dates or colour code the shipping dates differently with a Conditional Format.

Bradhickswa · 07/26/22

@Brent Wilson

Thank you for your input and describing your process to me. I've implemented the COUNTIF formula as you laid out in my sheet and while it does show the number of times a specific "task" shows up in the task column, I'm more concerned with determining if the same task being done locally and for overseas is scheduled for the same person (at the same time), I want to be able to deconflict it. I'm wishing there was a way for SS to run an analysis and show where the conflicts are in the timeline. I guess it's difficult to explain without physically showing you what I mean. But in order for me to do that, I'd have to replace virtually all information in the sheet and I have over 450 rows of info. Thanks for the suggestion though, I appreciate it!

-Brad

Brent Wilson · 07/27/22

@Bradhickswa

Try looking at CountIFS
=COUNTIFS([Task]:[Task], =Task@row, [Assigned To]:[Assigned To], =[Assigned To]@row)

The issue becomes the dates .. Because it would have to be exactly the same start date and/or end date as you could not test and overlap

Might get you a bit closer

I believe resource management might be what you are looking for but it costs extra

https://www.smartsheet.com/platform/resource-management

How to view duplicate tasks at once to help with task assignment?

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