Go live date, Start date, Due Date, can monday calculate?

Hi All

Very new to Monday, used to using Excel and Smartsheet for project plans.

Need help automating/ auto calculating dates on a project plan.

Example. Project is 60 days long, the end date (Go live) is 5/31/23.

Need for each task in project plan to reflect start date = go live date minus specified days
Need for each task in project plan to reflect end date = start date plus duration

The issue has been each task doesn’t have the same specified days so the formula column is not useful.
I tried importing an excel plan with the dates populated but then none of the other automations or dependencies work, and if I change a date, nothing else automatically updates.

I am sure I am making this much harder than needs to be, but I have been struggling with this for more than 2 weeks… send help!!

hi @Trivia

Welcome to the community! I am not sure I get your use case to the fullest. Looks like you want to do backward planning (knowing the go-live and duration of the tasks) but also forward planning (knowing the start date). If you both on the same project you might run into conflicts, I assume. Or is is that one part of the project is backward planning and another part is forward?

As far as I know this can’t be done naïvely within monday. There is an app called ScedulerPro (see https://monday.com/marketplace/10000139) that can do both forward and backward planning and has a duration column for each task. You have to set a dependency between the tasks using the monday dependency column. The app also provides:

  • a customizable workweek (5 days, 4 days, split)
  • configurable holiday days
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Backward planning would be a start, if I can just get that piece done I can work out the other needs. I will check out Scheduler Pro. Thanks so much!