Extracting a subproject without breaking dates for someone without access to Master

Question

Extracting a subproject without breaking dates for someone without access to Master

Anonymous

Ok guys, this is my first post because I am tearing my hair out.

I have been creating a Master schedule for around 3 months now. It is made up of the following:

Around 100 tasks called 'Dependencies'

4 supplier schedules inserted as subprojects - linked

Activities from the supplier schedules link up into a dependency and then down into another suppliers schedule. For example

Supplier A Activity 1 --> Dependency Activity 1 complete --> Supplier B Activity 2

The reason I added these intermediate dependencies was to counteract any potential breakage if one supplier changed their schedule; I would only need to do the links to the dependencies. I read somewhere this was better practice, but anyway, this is not the issue.

Here is my problem:

Each week, suppliers will be sending me an updated schedule. I will be renaming that schedule to match the subproject in the Master and resaving so that the Master gets updated, all the dates will change (depending on how late someone is), and the magic happens.

I then need to be able to extract the subproject to send back to the supplier that shows any date changes to their activities due to delays from the other suppliers - This is where I am going in circles. I need to break the links so that they are able to open the file, but when I break the links the dates are changing.

Here is what I have tried:

Opening the subproject file individually, 'save as' as new file, break the links - changes all the dates
Tried embedding the subproject directly into the master 'not linked' - changes all the dates

Points to consider:

The supplier doesn't want to have to look through the master and then compare against their version and update (some suppliers' schedules are 1000 lines)

and

I don't want to be in the position where every week, I have to relink all the dependencies again (there are at least 100).

Please help - there must be a solution right...?

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8 answers

Answer 1

Katie12345ABC,

welcome to the forum. You have come to the right place. This forum goes back to about 2010, and since then just about every issue or problem that could come up has come up, and been resolved, and the best and quickest answers have come from Dale, John and me.. This is where the magic happens.

I guess you can imagine how difficult it is to answer questions and solve problems in this forum when all we have to work with is the vague descriptions of the problems that most people provide, usually with no pictures ,and of course we cannot see the mpp file.

Your problem description is pretty good, but still no pictures.. And I reckon I can fix your problem in 10 minutes if I could see the mpp file(s). However, let's press on with the discussion and work with what we have.

First of all, the quality and integrity of these schedules from your suppliers are probably, well, to be polite, probably leave a lot to be desired, and likely are pretty bad bordering on junk. .But for now, let's assume they are all good (enough) , and press on.

The bricklayers have a lot of tasks and milsetones but the only one that is of interest to the roofies is the one that marks the completion of the walls because that is a FS0 predecessor of starting the roof. When you make the link from the bricklaying finish milestone to the "dependency" in the master file and thence from there to the start of the roofing, that should auto re-schedule all of the tasks in the roofing, provided that the roofing schedule is not full of date constraints. Then you want t o send that back to the roofies. How about just making all of the roofing tasks must start on (MSO) date constraints so that you can then disconnect the roofing subproject from the master and send that to the roofies?

There is more but that will do for now. Any help?

Answer 2

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Answer 3

Katie12345ABC,

Sorry about the grand theft auto thing, I got carried away. He'd probably get you for identity theft.

I'd like to see a screen shot of your master with one of the milestone tasks (e.g. "Walls are complete") showing the Predecessor and Successor fields. I just like to verify what I think you are doing.

Yeah that's right, you cannot unlink without losing the changes (that's where the constraints come in). And as you found out, doing a Save As duplicates the links and there ya go, a corrupt file structure.

I do have a way to get there but it requires a dynamic to static (with preserved inter-project links) conversion macro. I wrote it several years ago for scenarios similar to yours. But it is not freeware, there is a license fee. However, let me ponder your specific need and see if there may be other approaches. I'll get back to you later.

Meanwhile, would you be willing to share your files with me? If so, I'll let you know how to send them.

John

Answer 4

Hi John

Thank you for getting back to quickly!

I will try to explain a little better from my end. My suppliers sent me their working schedules. I have saved those schedules in Folder A with a specific naming convention. I plan to always use this file and these naming conventions.

I have linked up the subprojects to my 'milestones' in my Master. For example: My Milestone 'Walls are Complete' has a predecessor of Supplier Subproject A (Finish Walls) and a successor of Supplier B (Start Roof).

When I receive a new supplier schedule each week it gets saved/overwrites that current schedule in Folder A - All my links remain intact. The 'magic' I refer to is that when Supplier A delays their finishing walls activity by one week, this then pushes Supplier B's activity in their schedule out by one week.

I want to be able to then deliver this 'updated' schedule back to supplier B so they can see they cannot start the roof for another week and so need to do something else or hold off on deploying their roof guys for example.

When I open Supplier B's schedule directly and 'unlink' from the project it changes all the dates. If I make any copies or 'Save As' is duplicates all the links as ghost tasks in my master too.

Answer 5

Katie12345ABC,

Don't tear your hair out, it hurts and your just won't look the same. I mean, what's the policeman going to do when he pulls you over for speeding and then looks at your license and then looks at you? Ooo, grand theft auto.

Just for reference dynamically linked structures (master and subprojects) in Project are prone to corruption.. Files in a linked structure should never be renamed, moved, overwritten or "saved off" to another location. So when I read the steps you are using in your process, it gives me concern.

How exactly are you creating the inter-project dependencies? With inter-project links you will not be able to "extract" a subproject and not have dates change unless you set a constraint on the changed tasks to "lock in" the new date. Not a convenient thing to do manually with 100 dependencies over multiple files. It could be done with some VBA.

I don't quite understand how you are re-inserting a new supplier plan into your master and getting the dates to update (i.e. the "magic"). The supplier plan will have no link information with regard to the inter-project link to another supplier's plan in the master. Do you re-create the inter-project links each update?

You've got a tiger by the tail on this one. We need to understand your process better in order to help you "tame the tiger".

John

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Extracting a subproject without breaking dates for someone without access to Master

8 answers