Comments on: MS Project HELP

Question: MS Project HELP

sweetkid — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:38:29 -0800

MS Project...how can you set a task so that it MUST begin on a tuesday?

At work, I am a pm for a technology project. All copy must go into "copy clearance" for two weeks. The copy must go into copy clearance on a Tuesday. if it misses the tuesday deadline, it must wait until the next Tuesday to go into clearance again.

I would like to represent this condition in the MS Project Timeline. I would like to set the Copy Clearance task such that the task cannot begin until the Tuesday following the dependency above it (Copy Complete). Once the preceding task is moved, the copy clearance task should be moved to the next Tuesday.

All of the constraints in MS Project are dependent on actual dates, not days of the week. I found some support information on this topic, but it is really old and suggests doing something in Visual Basic. There is something about recurring tasks but that doesn't seem to work, because this isn't recurring. If I can solve this, my coworkers will be impressed and my friends will love me. Ok, maybe just my coworkers will be impressed. And it's a new job! so thanks in advance.

By: Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:45:09 -0800

So, if I'm reading this right, you're saying you don't want a simple Must Start On date. You want the copy clearance tasks to always lag behind the copy complete task to the next Tuesday, which could be one day or six days away, depending on copy complete date?

Do I have that right?

By: sweetkid

sweetkid — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:47:29 -0800

Yes, that is exactly right.

By: sweetkid

sweetkid — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:50:17 -0800

well, it could be any number of days away, depending on when Copy Complete finishes.

By: Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:59:49 -0800

Then I think you want to look into using resource and task calendars to specify that copy clearance can only work on specific days. You're telling Project that the resource that can be applied to copy clearance (i.e. the person that will be handling copy clearance) is available only on certain days of the week.

In other words, you're not lagging anything (unlike what I thought before). You're saying, "this can only occur on Tuesdays ... so if you miss one, you'll have to wait to the next one." At least I think that solves your problem.