Potential Task, and therefore potential resource usage

[John Rees]

Hello,

Is there away to assign a task as being only a potential task?
I would like this to be obvious through a colour change or something in a
gantt chart print. I would also like this 'potential' flag to carry over to
the resource allocated to the task at that time so that it is clear when
viewing resource graph - percentage allocation.

At the moment I'm just formating tasks in a different colour which doesn't
obviously carry over through the link with the resource.

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi John,

I know of no way within Project to do what you want. However, I'm pretty
sure that some vba code could meet your needs. Try posting on the
microsoft.public.project.developer newsgroup where the gurus hang out.
Please see FAQ Item: 24. Project Newsgroups. FAQs, companion products and
other useful Project information can be seen at this web address:
http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[Jim Aksel]

John, you are talking about conditional branching. If certain conditions are
met, then execute tasks 10,11,12 and 13. Otherwise go from task 9 to task 14.

No way to do that really, unless you know what the conditional branch
trigger is. A companion product to Project called Deltek Risk+ (Pronounced
Risk Plus) allows conditional branching only during Monte Carlo simulation.

Try this, assuming the "potiential tasks" are lines 10-13 and they daisy
chain, then keep those tasks. Link 9 to 10 using FS. Link 14 back to 9 also
using FS. So you now "Fork" your schedule logic. The default is you will go
8-9-14-15... The path 9-10-11-12-13 will leave 13 hanging out in space and
not drving anything.

If the conditions for your branch are met, then re-link 14 to 13 and break
the 9-14 link. Task 14 marches to the right.

Careful with your resource loading and baselines. Project has no way to
know if you want these tasks to be excluded from the roll-ups. The costs
will be included ($, work hours, resource availability, etc. are all
impacted). Cell formating is only possible in P2007 so you may have to resort
to using font colors or underscores.

You could do this with some VBA, but the VBA has to know the logic of when
to branch and that has to be in the code. Something tells me this branch
condition is externally triggered so you will have to do it manually.

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Jim Aksel, MVP

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