Defining Start Date of a Split Task

[John]

When a task is split, what level of control do you have over the
remaining split portion of the task? e.g. Task starts Monday 9am for 3
days duration, split after 2 days and want the remaining 1d to begin
say from 14:00 on the Friday.

When using the split task it always constrains to the start of the day
- I've found that by changing the Gantt Timescale to a more granular
timecale such as hours allows a little more precision, but this seems
a gludge - any thoughts gang?

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

Hello John,
Change the "Bottom Tier" of your Time Scale to "Hours" so you'll be able to
set the start time of a split as you want.

Gérard Ducouret

 

[John]

Hi Gérard

Thanks for the reply - I'd identified that as a workaround, but it's
still a cludge - if my task is split with say 1/2 day remaining, and
my working day is 09:00 - 12:45 then 13:45 - 17:30, and I want this
remaining part to start after lunch on a day, it's not very user
friendly to have the bottom tier set to minutes so that I can start
the remaining part of the task to start at 13:45 !

*surely* there's more control over this than this 'workaround'...?!

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

Hi John,

I'm afraid there is no other way to do that :-(

Gérard Ducouret

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

How would suggest that Project know that the split on *this* task
interrupted at noon is supposed to resume 2 days later at 13:45 but *that*
task's split, also interrupted at noon, is supposed to resume 3 days later
at 09:00 unless you manually supply that information?

 

[John]

That's exactly what I'm asking - how do I manually supply this
information to Project, i.e. have the manual control over it without
resorting to changing the timescale on the Gantt!? I don't expect
project to work it out for itself (although it, like other ms products
does try to use some AI / heuristics) I'd merely thought it was useful
have that degree of user control over when the next part of the task
following the split actually starts, as you do for the start of the
task as a whole - e.g. for a task additionally have a start n
parameter where n is the next start date of the next block of work
after the split. I'd then be able to manually punch in the date/time
of this and hey presto.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Would be convenient if one could type it in, but for now, temporarily
expanding the timescale to show a conventient smallest increment is the only
way to do it. When you are dragging the second half of the spit there will
be a "tool tip" box on the mouse showing the date/time the task resumes and
the displayed will reflect the timescale increment selected. Sorry
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[John]

Hey Steve - don't be sorry, it ain't your fault! I was just validating
that I hadn't overlooked some real obvious config somewhere. I've been
using project since v.98 and never had a need to do this until
recently on a project and it got me thinking (which is always a
dangerous thing!)

Thanks gang!