Building An Auto-Populating Task Calendar In Excel

August 8, 2016 5:31 PM

I'm looking to create some way that I can track jobs I have coming up, as well as have them populate into available time slots in my scheduled based on anticipated completion time. Can this be done in an Excel sheet, or is there some sort of program that exists that is better suited for my needs?

Basically I would have information to input about tasks I have coming up, such as "XYZ is due on 8/12/16 and will take about 4 hours to complete. ZZZ is due 8/16/16 and will take about 6 hours to complete."

Then ideally it would auto-populate an hourly schedule over the next week or so, prioritizing tasks with more urgent due dates. So for Monday it would put XYZ from 8:00 to 12:00, ZZZ from 1:00 to 5:00, and the remaining two hours of ZZZ on Tuesday 8:00 to 10:00.

But then if I were to enter a more pressing task, such as "AAA is due 8/9/16 and will take 2 hours to complete" it would automatically change the schedule to be Monday 8:00 to 10:00 AAA, 10:00 to 12:00 and 1:00 to 4:00 XYZ, etc.

Is there a way to do this in Excel, or is there some sort of app or program designed to do something like this? Any ideas are welcome!

posted by Malleable to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: You are describing the functionality of Microsoft Project.
posted by valeries at 6:46 PM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Awesome, thank you! I knew something like this had to exist.
posted by Malleable at 8:55 PM on August 8, 2016

There's dozens of these, both online and offline. 'Project management', 'project planner' and 'gantt chart' are all search terms that will get you alternatives.

I've heard good things about Smartsheet and Liquidplanner as two online versions.

My firm uses Teamweek, but it's pretty barebones and doesn't really support projects per-se, more time scheduling.
posted by Happy Dave at 8:22 AM on August 11, 2016