SOON on MS PROJECT

Chachrist,



I only suggest Access as the operating environment is closer to "programming" than Excel so you’re more likely to be able to carry global variables and stuff. Plus I guess it would be more efficient at number crunching. Assuming that MSP is VBA compliant (and I *think* it is) then you shuold be able to load the function library from MSP into access which may include some interesting commands to register activity links and stuff (pure conjecture here though, and it’s unlikely that functions in those libraries would be any more compatible with P3 data than MSP already isn’t)



I do have the Excel/VBA docs for extract from P3, I’d forgotten about those, they query the P3 databases directly don’t they.... Could be an option :D



Still, you’d have to have an (human) operator there to run the ... extract / randomise durations / reinsert / schedule / extract results ... for each iteration, rather than fully automated as in your original example, as I’m reasonably sure that VBA can’t tell P3 to schedule the plan. some clever coding may find a way around this though, then you have excel doing the data manipulation and storing the results and P3 running the actual analysis. The only thing that’s missing (conceptually) is for teh VBA script to be able to trip P3 to schedule the plan. Hmmmm, I wish I knew more about custom libraries and programming, that idea has potential

MS project has activity qty limits doesn’t it? I do know that I have stopped tryng to run export / import between P3 and MSP. Too much stress ;P

I really liked your initial idea, but have struggled to think how you would code the relationships in Excel. They were coded manually in the formulae in your example iirc. That would, of course, be a nightmare in any significant project.

I also considered to do the analysis using;

export from P3
randomise durations in Excel (or Access or whatever)
import back to P3
Schedule
Export results
Repeat

but I’d need several assistants to sit there all night running the import/export as I have no idea how to automate it, but I can see that you might use MSP for that as it is VBA compliant (I think...?)

If you are talented enough to take on this project (and it seems you are) then how about running it in Access? That may provide you the tools to calculate ES/EF on a basic formula (using an update query) instead of needing one for each activity, but I am not talented enough to say for sure if it can be done or not, only that I *think* it may be possible.

Either way, good luck in your endeavours, I look forward to the results!