Guild of Project Controls: Compendium | Roles | Assessment | Certifications | Membership

Tips on using this forum..

(1) Explain your problem, don't simply post "This isn't working". What were you doing when you faced the problem? What have you tried to resolve - did you look for a solution using "Search" ? Has it happened just once or several times?

(2) It's also good to get feedback when a solution is found, return to the original post to explain how it was resolved so that more people can also use the results.

changing the activity links and lags

2 replies [Last post]
Taher Abualsamen
User offline. Last seen 2 years 42 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 17 Mar 2011
Posts: 19
Groups: None

I m trying to review the MS schedule submitted by the Contractor, i noticed that he is changing the activity links and lags in the updated monthly schedule, does anyone have a spreadsheet or a certain method to review the links I tried exporting the links to xls but it is not easy due to the links have 2 unique IDs (Predecessor and successor)

Taher

Replies

Taher Abualsamen
User offline. Last seen 2 years 42 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 17 Mar 2011
Posts: 19
Groups: None

Thank you Tom

Taher

Tom Boyle
User offline. Last seen 4 days 15 hours ago. Offline
Joined: 28 Nov 2006
Posts: 304
Groups: None

Taher,

You're correct; MSP stores links as objects contained in the two connected tasks, not in a separate table.  You can get all the information you need from just one side of the tasks, however.

If you are using a recent version of MSP, then the easiest approach is to use the "Compare Projects" tool on the Project ribbon.  This tool automatically compares the current project with another (previous version) and identifies changed values in a table that you specify.  Just be sure to specify a table that includes "Unique ID Predecessors" as one of the columns.  Differences between the two projects will be flagged. (If you want to get fancy, you could also include "Unique ID Successors" in the table.  Then in the new "Comparison Report" project, create a custom flag field that flags EITHER predecessors or successors being changed.  Filtering by this flag will list all tasks with changed logic.)

You could do the same thing in a spreadsheet after exporting the same data (including Unique ID, Unique ID Predecessors, and Unique ID Successors fields.)

In both cases, the comparison key must be the "Unique ID" task field.  If your contractor has used techniques that re-populate or obscure this field (e.g. by wholesale deletion and replacement of tasks), then no standard comparison technique will work.

Good luck, tmb