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Hello again,
Gary, I tried what you suggested, and it didn’t work properly.
When I unchecked “tasks must honor their constraints”, it STILL would not re-schedule forward a task which had a “start no earlier than” constraint. I find this odd, since I believe that updating tasks and rescheduling uncompleted work forward is something rather basic that everyone must do with this tool – so I don’t know why it is rather cumbersome for me.

Let me give you an example of what’s happening. Let’s say I have tasks constrained to “start no earlier than March 15”, and March 15, of course, has passed. In my plan, this task is scheduled to be worked on from March 15 to March 22, but it didn’t happen. So, in Microsoft Project, I want to say to schedule that work forward. I click the “reschedule forward” button, and it does the function on some tasks but not all. I get a message to check all of my tasks with constraints and change the constraints. It’s odd because if today is May 7, then May 7 is later than March 15, so I’m still actually honoring the constraint. On some “start no earlier than” tasks, it simply will not reschedule them forward. But, it WILL do so on other “start no earlier than” tasks and I don’t see the difference between the tasks it schedules forward and those which it will not.

Also, as I’m sure you know, when it DOES schedule the work forward, it changes the constraint to May 7 (or it introduces a constraint if the task was previously an “as soon as possible” task). Therefore, I find it funny that Project will reschedule work forward by introducing a “start no earlier than” May 7 constraint. Yet, when you need to schedule this work forward a second time, it will reject it.

When it rejects it, I have to manually go into each task description sheet and change the constraint to “start no earlier than” May 7.

As I mentioned in my first post, I re-schedule or change the constraints, re-level, filter for tasks which are scheduled to occur earlier than the status date (May 7, in my example), change the constraints on those remaining tasks, re-level, repeatedly do it again, re-level, etc, repeatedly until I get all of the tasks.

There has to be a better way.

thanks
Paula

Hello again,
Gary, I tried what you suggested, and it didn’t work properly.
When I unchecked “tasks must honor their constraints”, it STILL would not re-schedule forward a task which had a “start no earlier than” constraint. I find this odd, since I believe that updating tasks and rescheduling uncompleted work forward is something rather basic that everyone must do with this tool – so I don’t know why it is rather cumbersome for me.

Let me give you an example of what’s happening. Let’s say I have tasks constrained to “start no earlier than March 15”, and March 15, of course, has passed. In my plan, this task is scheduled to be worked on from March 15 to March 22, but it didn’t happen. So, in Microsoft Project, I want to say to schedule that work forward. I click the “reschedule forward” button, and it does the function on some tasks but not all. I get a message to check all of my tasks with constraints and change the constraints. It’s odd because if today is May 7, then May 7 is later than March 15, so I’m still actually honoring the constraint. On some “start no earlier than” tasks, it simply will not reschedule them forward. But, it WILL do so on other “start no earlier than” tasks and I don’t see the difference between the tasks it schedules forward and those which it will not.

Also, as I’m sure you know, when it DOES schedule the work forward, it changes the constraint to May 7 (or it introduces a constraint if the task was previously an “as soon as possible” task). Therefore, I find it funny that Project will reschedule work forward by introducing a “start no earlier than” May 7 constraint. Yet, when you need to schedule this work forward a second time, it will reject it.

When it rejects it, I have to manually go into each task description sheet and change the constraint to “start no earlier than” May 7.

As I mentioned in my first post, I re-schedule or change the constraints, re-level, filter for tasks which are scheduled to occur earlier than the status date (May 7, in my example), change the constraints on those remaining tasks, re-level, repeatedly do it again, re-level, etc, repeatedly until I get all of the tasks.

There has to be a better way.

thanks
Paula

I’ve managed to answer my own question, but thanks for your help.

For those of you interested in this multi-project question —
It looks like, if you have a resource pool, you can open a sub-project file and the resource pool file – and, it will level appropriately. The resource pool file maintains a record of the other activities assigned to the resource, outside of that particular sub-project file.
So, I can mail my sub-project managers their small subproject file along with the resource file and let work independently, then combine all into the large file for a complete view.

I’ve managed to answer my own question, but thanks for your help.

For those of you interested in this multi-project question —
It looks like, if you have a resource pool, you can open a sub-project file and the resource pool file – and, it will level appropriately. The resource pool file maintains a record of the other activities assigned to the resource, outside of that particular sub-project file.
So, I can mail my sub-project managers their small subproject file along with the resource file and let work independently, then combine all into the large file for a complete view.

Thank you Gary.
Yes, you can do leveling. What I meant is that you have to have the master project and sub-projects to do leveling (if your resources are shared across the files, which happens in some cases on my project). But, the number of cases in which this happens are few.
Could I handle this by inserting an “external dependency” in a subproject? In other words, if you have Mary who is working on tasks in the master project and in the sub-project file A, then the leveling on file A (alone) would be inaccurate. Could I create a “Mary available for work on sub-project A” task within file A, and then just keep it updated regularly. Using this, I might be able to let the sub-project managers do more manipulating with these separate files, including leveling.
If not, then they would need the master project file in order to do any leveling on sub-projects. Any comments?
Again, thanks for the suggestions.
-PaulaG

Thank you Gary.
Yes, you can do leveling. What I meant is that you have to have the master project and sub-projects to do leveling (if your resources are shared across the files, which happens in some cases on my project). But, the number of cases in which this happens are few.
Could I handle this by inserting an “external dependency” in a subproject? In other words, if you have Mary who is working on tasks in the master project and in the sub-project file A, then the leveling on file A (alone) would be inaccurate. Could I create a “Mary available for work on sub-project A” task within file A, and then just keep it updated regularly. Using this, I might be able to let the sub-project managers do more manipulating with these separate files, including leveling.
If not, then they would need the master project file in order to do any leveling on sub-projects. Any comments?
Again, thanks for the suggestions.
-PaulaG

I also think you can’t do a fill on the cells (annoying, right?!)
I’ve had to color code different parts of my project files, so I’ve used the font->color function and that is helpful to quickly separate out different sections of the schedule.

hope this helps

I also think you can’t do a fill on the cells (annoying, right?!)
I’ve had to color code different parts of my project files, so I’ve used the font->color function and that is helpful to quickly separate out different sections of the schedule.

hope this helps

Great – I tried the first method and it worked. Thanks.

It looks like those Text boxes can be pretty handy. How else would you use them? For other info on which you want to filter?

Thanks so much,
PaulaG

Great – I tried the first method and it worked. Thanks.

It looks like those Text boxes can be pretty handy. How else would you use them? For other info on which you want to filter?

Thanks so much,
PaulaG

Yes, I did this and it worked for all tasks which didn’t have predecessors. Other tasks still moved to the wrong start date.

In the end, I had to set a “must start on” constraint on the 1st task, then set a “start no sooner than” constraint on all of the other tasks which did not have predecessors. A bit of a pain, but it worked.
Thanks
PaulaG

Yes, I did this and it worked for all tasks which didn’t have predecessors. Other tasks still moved to the wrong start date.

In the end, I had to set a “must start on” constraint on the 1st task, then set a “start no sooner than” constraint on all of the other tasks which did not have predecessors. A bit of a pain, but it worked.
Thanks
PaulaG

For starters, you can make it show only the higher-level tasks (summary tasks) if you don’t need to see all of the details. Project-> Outline gives you a whole set of options to do this. Also, you could just show the milestones, which is an option under Project -> Filtered for. Same operation to just show Critical Path.
In my case, my Microsoft Project file is quite large also. I keep all of the detail for when I need it (sometimes I might need to dig in to see why resource X has too much work to do in October), but I always collapse it selectively for sending to others or printing. By collapsing it selectively, only expand the part that the other person has to see. Finally, I’ve laid out my project with all of the detailed tasks and will do this until I get a baseline (to see where our end date is). But, I don’t think it’s possible for me to update all of the tasks on a regular basis (I’ve got well over 1000 tasks), so I am tracking the project based only on a bunch of milestones I’ve inserted.

In other words, Microsoft Project can keep the details, but hide them when it is too much. Good luck!
Hope this helps,
PaulaG

For starters, you can make it show only the higher-level tasks (summary tasks) if you don’t need to see all of the details. Project-> Outline gives you a whole set of options to do this. Also, you could just show the milestones, which is an option under Project -> Filtered for. Same operation to just show Critical Path.
In my case, my Microsoft Project file is quite large also. I keep all of the detail for when I need it (sometimes I might need to dig in to see why resource X has too much work to do in October), but I always collapse it selectively for sending to others or printing. By collapsing it selectively, only expand the part that the other person has to see. Finally, I’ve laid out my project with all of the detailed tasks and will do this until I get a baseline (to see where our end date is). But, I don’t think it’s possible for me to update all of the tasks on a regular basis (I’ve got well over 1000 tasks), so I am tracking the project based only on a bunch of milestones I’ve inserted.

In other words, Microsoft Project can keep the details, but hide them when it is too much. Good luck!
Hope this helps,
PaulaG

This might be a silly idea, but worth trying. Why don’t you assign the 50-hour resource to work a 6-day week? Six 8-hour days is pretty close to 50 hours, and, in reality, this person really does work an extra “day” if a “day” is an 8-hour block of time. Similarly, the 60-hour person could be shown to work 7 days. It’s off a bit, but might give you the right answer (schedule completion date), if you’re looking at a schedule which stretches out for several weeks or months.

For the cost, you’ll have to adjust slightly to make up for the 2 hours per week on one person and the 4 hours per person on the other person. You could do this by adding another person who works 3 days/month (you can do this by creating a special calendar for that person, showing he works 3 days in 4 weeks). Not elegant, but it might work.
-PaulaG