Product Updates - November 5th, 2022 - Reports, Dependency Types, and Constraints

At Spreadsheet.com we’re serious about enabling you to build powerful project management solutions and custom no-code apps for work. That’s why we’re excited to announce two major new features in a series of launches we’ll be doing over the next few months:

  1. Reports allow you to create a single view of data from multiple worksheets and workbooks. :bookmark_tabs:

  2. Improvements to Gantt views and new Project Management capabilities let you plan and manage projects like a pro, including support for all industry-standard dependency and constraint types, constraint dates, and lag times. :trophy:

In addition, we published 18 new templates for use cases ranging from Software Development Project Planning to Project and Event Budgeting and Planning, along with new use case guides and work management articles.

Let’s take a look!

Reports

Reports are a new entity type in Spreadsheet.com that allow you to pull data from multiple worksheets and workbooks into a single combined view that can be shared with anyone on your team.

ReportsAnimPost

Reports update in real-time and can be filtered, sorted, grouped, and printed, just like worksheets.

Reports are a paid plan feature, with plan limits as follows:
Standard: Unlimited reports, 2 worksheets per report
Premium: Unlimited reports, unlimited worksheets per report
Enterprise: Unlimited reports, unlimited worksheets per report

For more information about Reports see Introduction to Reports and Creating and Managing Reports.

Meanwhile, stay tuned for even more reporting features coming soon such as the ability to send reports as PDF or Excel docs on-demand, or automatically at scheduled intervals (e.g. the end of each month).

Dependency Types and Lag Times

Spreadsheet.com now supports task lag times and all four of the industry-standard dependency types used to determine the relationship between a task and its predecessors’ start and finish times:

– Finish-to-Start (FS)
– Start-to-Start (SS)
– Start-to-Finish (SF)
– Finish-to-Finish (FF)

You’ll find dependency type options and lag times in the Predecessor field of the row dialog when opening a row from the Gantt chart or sheet.

DependencyTypes

You can also access dependency types and lag times for a task by clicking on the new dependencies icon in Predecessor cells.

DependencyTypesFromCell

For more information about Dependency Types and Lag Times see Introduction to Dependencies and Creating and Managing Dependencies.

Constraint Types and Dates

Spreadsheet.com now supports task constraint dates and all eight of the industry-standard constraint types, which are used in conjunction with dependency types and lag times to further control when a task starts and finishes based on start and finish dates of predecessors, and an optional constraint date:

– As Soon As Possible (ASAP)
– As Late As Possible (ALAP)
– Finish No Earlier Than (FNET)
– Start No Earlier Than (SNET)
– Finish No Later Than (FNLT)
– Start No Later Than (SNLT)
– Must Finish On (MFO)
– Must Start On (MSO)

This combined with our all new task scheduling algorithms provides a rich project management experience within Gantt views, allowing tasks to pull and push dependencies in the same ways experienced project management software users are familiar with.

GanttPushAndPull

Two new column data types are now available in worksheets with Project Management enabled called Constraint Type and Constraint Date. You’ll need to add these columns to your worksheet in order to edit constraint settings.

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For more information about Constraint Types and Dates see Introduction to Constraints and Creating and Managing Constraints.

Draggable Canvas in Gantt Views

The Gantt chart canvas in Gantt views is now draggable using your mouse, not just the laptop trackpad. Just grab and hold the canvas to move it in any direction. A much faster and easier way to home in on the project region you want to look at and work with.

DraggableGanttCanvasShort

New Work Management Resources

In our new Project Execution Best Practices article you’ll learn all about what project execution is, and how project managers can implement best practices to ensure successful project delivery.

Other newly published resources include:

New Use Case Guides

In the new Quick Guide to Using Gantt Charts with Dependencies, you’ll learn how to use dependencies and the new dependency types and lag times to manage detailed project plans.

Other newly published guides include:

New Templates

In addition, we published 18 new templates for use cases ranging from Software Development Project Planning to Project and Event Budgeting, Communication Planning, Event Planning and Budgeting, and more.

For example, the Software Development Project Plan template is designed for managing a development project from end to end with a task list, objectives, assignments, dates, statuses, Gantt views, and Calendar views.

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The Monthly Project Budget template makes it easy to track and manage any project’s budget on a task-by-task basis with hierarchies.

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The Event Planning template helps ensure your next event is executed smoothly with everything from an event schedule, budget, vendor, and attendee management.

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Other newly published templates include:

3 Likes

Not able to download and/or print the complete worksheet, i.e., the pdf of my worksheet only has the top half of the first page and the top half of the second page. Using Safari, though I also attempted in Chrome and Opera. Wondering if there is a workaround.

Hi Michael,

Thank you for sharing this and I’m sorry to hear that you are running into this issue. We have tried replicating this on our end but we have been unable to do so.

I’m going to follow up with you via email about finding time to connect so we can try to see what is happening with this specific Workbook to troubleshoot further.

Thank you again for sharing this Michael!

Best,
Thomas Van Steyn

2 Likes

Thanks for reporting this issue.
We are tracking this internally as #005846

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apologies … this post is in reference to the new Reports function … should have read “Not able to download and/or print the complete Report worksheet …”

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@Michael_Reynolds Issue #005846 is resolved as part of the latest upgrade.

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