Assign relationship faster

can you export/import activity and successor data from P3e in a similar way to p3.1? If you can, then you can write the links in the correct format in a Database table then dump them straight into the plan. You can use excel or access or whatever you’re most comfortable with to do a bit of logical linking using the activity data export. I do this a lot to hook up phase planning to individual scope items.



It might work something like this;



export the activities you need to link and their WBS data (or whatever it is you’re basing the need for links on)

export a relationship (just to get the correct table layout). In P3.1, this is 4 columns titled PRE,SUCC,REL,LAG respectively, may be different in P3e but not much, I’d guess



In excel use filtering or whtever to create a list of the activities you want to link. This way you can build up a list in excel of the links you want



Dump this list into your relationship table and import it to your plan. This is a very fast way of creating large numbers of links but you need to test before committing to the plan. The first time you do it you will probebly find that you got something wrong, ilke the relationships are all FF instead of FS or are the wrong way round (I have done this, created >4,000 loops >.< ) or somesuch



It’s vital to remember that importing links puts new links in, it won’t take links out (although it will change an SS to FF for example) so once you’ve made the import your stuck with the results. Thus testing on a back-up is paramount before committing the import to teh schedule.

KD

If your using P5 just use the WBS summary activity type

Andy