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.

Interproject link disappears upon Activity code change

8 replies [Last post]
Evgeny Z.
User offline. Last seen 39 weeks 4 days ago. Offline
Joined: 13 Jan 2008
Posts: 442
Groups: None

Dear all,

another question regarding portfolios. I noticed, that if I change the code of activity to which there was an inter project link, then this link will simply disappear from the portfolio without any warning upon the next portfolio consolidation.

I understand the reason, where is is coming from, but since activity code change seems not to be something prohibited in Spider, this looks to be quite a risky situation to lose the interproject links.

Is this an expected behavior?

Regards.

Evgeny

Replies

Rafael Davila
User offline. Last seen 1 day 3 hours ago. Offline
Joined: 1 Mar 2004
Posts: 5229

Evgeny,

Spider files are databases, in all its versions users can create as many databases they want, each can be as large as user wants, if you can link separate databases this is above what other scheduling software can do out of the box.

My personal struggle is on the way different contractors and subcontractors define their own codes that can be in conflict with other databases. This is why P6 implements the option of codes to be project specific. 

Best Regards,

Rafael

Evgeny Z.
User offline. Last seen 39 weeks 4 days ago. Offline
Joined: 13 Jan 2008
Posts: 442
Groups: None

Vladimir, I was also thinking, that another option could be instead of deletion to move inter-project link to something like "unmatched inter-project links" category/section.

But any way, this is just me "thinking aloud"

Regards.

Evgeny

Evgeny, at the moment this feature is absent but it is easy to add.

Rafael Davila
User offline. Last seen 1 day 3 hours ago. Offline
Joined: 1 Mar 2004
Posts: 5229

My knowledge about databases is very limited but looks like codes are relational within a single file but as soon as you have separate files there is no such relational link.

As you know there is a special link under project options to consider portfolio during calculations but I do not know how it works, perhaps a one way communication that will pull down some data from portfolio but will not make any changes to the portfolio tables until you execute a consolidation.

Evgeny Z.
User offline. Last seen 39 weeks 4 days ago. Offline
Joined: 13 Jan 2008
Posts: 442
Groups: None

Does activity on a project level actaully know, that it has a link to or from on a portfolio level?

I think that the message shall appear only for activities with external dependencies.

Evgeny Z.
User offline. Last seen 39 weeks 4 days ago. Offline
Joined: 13 Jan 2008
Posts: 442
Groups: None

Vladimir, understood.

The general message as I understand, is that code change of objects shall be in general avoided.

Regards.

Evgeny

Yes, it is expected bahavior. I think that we shall add warning message but still permit to break the link if necessary. For example with additional information it may be necessary to add details and instead of one activity create several. Only one of them will be used to keep existed dependency. So this activity shall have the same code.

The same problem exist when you compare two project versions. If to change activity code there will nothing to compare with in the previous version.