Draw dependencies between rolled up milestones?

[Dave]

Is there a way to draw a dependency line between a rolled up milestone
on a summary bar and another rolled up milestone on a different
summary bar? When I try to link two such tasks manually I get a link
from the end of the first summary bar to the beginning of the other
bar, but what I need is a link directly between the tasks.

Thanks
Dave

 

[John]

Dave,
A nearly identical question was asked a few months ago (maybe it was
you). The simple answer to your question is "no". However, as the
previous person who answered the other post said, "what would be the
purpose or advantage of showing a link midway between two summary
tasks"? The link line would be ambiguous at best.

In general, summary lines are not meant for linking. Unfortunately
Project does allow links between summary lines (end only) but unless the
user is an expert at using Project, the end result is unexpected things
in the schedule. The best advice is, don't link to summary lines.

I know this isn't the answer you wanted to hear but it is good advice
from experience and all the other MVPs will tell you the same thing.

John

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Dave,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

You can't link the rolled up part of the milestone, but if you expand the
summaries to show the milestones, you can link them as normal. Project will
then obey the link, though if you close down the summaries the link will not
appear.

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: <http://www.mvps.org/project/>

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on )

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

 

[Dave]

John,

I manage a web site that displays Gantt gifs generated by MSProject
EditCopyPicture as part of an automated process. My users want
dependencies between milestones in different schedules to be displayed
so they can see at a glance what major milestone in Schedule B depends
on what major milestone in schedule A. They specifically do not want
to have to drill down from summaries to detail skeds to see this.

I have devised a number of alternative ways of presenting this info,
but what users like best is summary bars with selected major
milestones rolled up and with links displayed between the major
milestones and their preds/succ's on other summary bars. I have drawn
such dependencies manually and the users love it, but my process
generates hundreds of Gantts every day and there is no way to automate
the drawing process.

Cheers
Dave

 

[John]

Dave,
It sounds like your users want a pretty picture not necessarily
definitized information. I guess it would show that something in summary
"A" is related to something in summary "B", etc.

As far as I can tell the draw features for Project do not have exposed
objects that can be manipulated via VBA. The best bet might be to export
the appropriate summary lines to PowerPoint and then use the draw
objects of PP to emulate the Gantt display. This type of process could
be automated. There may also be other graphic applications (e.g. Visio)
that could be used but I don't know whether drawing objects are exposed
for automation or not.

Hope this helps.
John