Summer can be a busy time full of vacations and changing schedules. If you are a project manager working in TaskRay, you might have accounted for such scenarios at the beginning of the summer, but there can always be changes or delays that cannot be foreseen. With summertime in the rearview window, now is a great time to look back at your summer projects and review them to make sure they are up-to-date. In this post, we will explore one of the TaskRay views that can be used for this purpose: the Spreadsheet View.
Spreadsheet View was introduced in the TaskRay Spring 2021 release and it operates very similarly to an Excel spreadsheet. This view allows you to make bulk updates to tasks in a quick and streamlined manner.
For example, maybe you need to bulk update the status of several tasks at once, such as moving them into the Started status. With Spreadsheet View, you can use the bulk update feature to accomplish this in a matter of seconds. Simply select the task records that need to be updated and then select the status List value into which you want to move the tasks.
Tip: you can use Control+Shift or Command+Shift to select multiple task records in this view to make the bulk update.
Next, you could also easily complete a set of tasks in this view. Let’s say that you have multiple tasks that were accidentally missed being marked complete while people were out on vacation in the summer. Similarly to updating task status, you could select the tasks that got missed and then update the Completed value. As the tasks are marked complete, the project progress is also updated to reflect the accurate completion status.
Another use for this view could be to move a set of tasks to a higher priority when necessary. For example, if you have tasks with the same name across different projects that need to be prioritized, you could filter the view to pull up the tasks, and then use the column sort option to easily group the tasks by their name. In this case, sorting the Task Name column will organize the records alpha-numerically based on their name. Once you have the necessary tasks grouped together, it makes it easy to select all of them to make the bulk update for a higher priority.
The final example that we will review in this blog post is using the Spreadsheet View to account for unforeseen changes in the project plan that made certain tasks no longer relevant. To keep the project clean and organized, it might be a good idea to delete those tasks. With the Spreadsheet view, you can select the entire rows for the task records that need to be removed, and then select the trash bin icon in the right-hand corner of the board to delete those records.
Now that your summer projects are all cleaned up, you might be feeling really motivated to finish out the year. Spreadsheet view makes it very easy to bulk update task information and keep your projects organized and up-to-date. And, as you look ahead to the upcoming months, you can be sure that Spreadsheet view will help you stay prepared for all the fall and year-end projects.
Spreadsheet View is included in the Standard and Premium editions of TaskRay. If you have any questions about any of the functionality described in this blog, please reach out to support@taskray.com.
