Smartsheet Dependencies: A Schedule That Updates Itself

One task slips, and you spend the afternoon hand editing every date after it.

That is not a scheduling problem. It is a linking problem. Your tasks have dates, but they do not know about each other, so every downstream correction is manual. Dependencies fix that at the source. Link the tasks once, and Smartsheet moves the rest of the schedule for you.

Here is the whole system, start to finish.

Prefer this as a printable reference? Download the PDF guide. Three pages, no email required.

Before and after

Without dependencies:

• A date moves, and you edit every task after it by hand.
• The schedule is out of date the day after you publish it.
• The finish date is a guess, because nothing shows what drives it.

With dependencies:

• A predecessor date changes, and the chain below it moves with it.
• The Gantt shows the real sequence, not a list of tasks that happen to have dates.
• Critical path names the exact sequence driving your finish date.

1. Turn dependencies on

Two columns do the work here: Predecessor and Duration. Turning dependencies on is what creates them.

1. Right click any column header, or click the gear icon in Gantt view, and open Project Settings.
2. Open Dependency Settings and check Dependencies enabled.
3. Select or auto create a Predecessor column and a Duration column.

2. Point each task at the one before it

A predecessor is the task that has to happen first. You reference it by its row number.

1. In the Predecessors cell, enter the row number of the task that must occur first.
2. Chain multiple predecessors by separating row numbers with commas, for example 3,5.
3. Or drag and drop the bars directly in Gantt view to link them visually.

3. Set how the two dates connect

Finish to Start is the default. Change the type when the two tasks connect at different ends, and use lag when you need a gap or an overlap between them. Both controls live in the same place. Click the pencil icon on a Predecessors cell, then Edit Predecessors.

Dependency type

The type controls which ends of the two tasks connect. There are four options.

Lag and lead

Lag and lead is the gap or the overlap between the two linked dates. It is one setting with two signs.

Shorthand. Type 2+3 in a Predecessors cell. That is Finish to Start from row 2, with a 3 day lag, in a single entry.

4. What happens when a date moves

This is the payoff. Once the tasks are linked, any date change to a predecessor automatically cascades to all successor tasks. Three rules are worth knowing before you rely on it.

• Lag and lead shifts are fixed offsets. They move by the same amount the predecessor moves. They do not scale.
• Lag time and elapsed duration cannot be used together on the same row.
• Task groups need one link, not one per row.

The rule people miss

For task groups, set the predecessor only on the first task of the next group, referencing the last task of the prior group.

One link carries the whole group. Everything downstream of that first task is already chained, so it moves on its own. Linking every row back to the group above it adds no accuracy the chain does not already give you.

5. See what actually drives your finish date

Enable Critical Path in Project Settings to highlight the task sequence that directly drives your project finish date.

This is optional, and it is worth turning on. Knowing a date slipped and knowing whether that slip moves your finish date are two different things, and only the critical path tells you the second one.

Where this fits

Dependencies handle the handoff between tasks. Once your schedules maintain themselves, the next question is usually rollup. How does portfolio level status get assembled without someone rebuilding it by hand every week? That is a metric sheet problem, not a Gantt problem.

Start with the links. A schedule that corrects itself is the foundation everything else sits on.