Nov 8, 2022

Product Updates: Reports and Gantt 2.0

Matt Robinson
co-founder & CEO
What's new in Spreadsheet.com?

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 making over the next few months:

1. Reports: A new document type allowing you to create a single view of data from multiple worksheets and workbooks to literally keep everyone on the same page. 🗂

2. Gantt 2.0: 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. 🏆

In addition, we published 18 new templates 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.

Creating a Report in Spreadsheet.com

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 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.

Task Dependency Types and Lag Times in Spreadsheet.com (in row dialog)

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

Task Dependency Types and Lag Times in Spreadsheet.com (from Predecessors cell)

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 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.

Push and Pull Task Dependencies in Spreadsheet.com Gantt Charts for Project Management

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.

Task Constraint Types in Spreadsheet.com Project Management

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. 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.

Draggable Canvas in Gantt Chart views in Spreadsheet.com

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.

Software Development Project Plan template in Spreadsheet.com

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

Monthly Project Budget template in Spreadsheet.com

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

Event Planning template in Spreadsheet.com

Other newly published templates include:

What's next?

A few features we're busy working on now:

Stay tuned for these and more updates coming soon ...

More blog posts ...