Forum Discussion
End dates of Subtask are appearing wrong
Hello again Saleem
If you want the summary task to be independent of the subtasks it groups, you must include the following instructions in the corresponding summary task of the xml schema you want to import:
<ManualStart>2024-12-26T00:00:00</ManualStart>
<ManualFinish>2024-12-29T23:59:00</ManualFinish>
<Manual>1</Manual>The order and place in which they are within the task does not matter, even if there are <Start>... and <Finish>... instructions, because when defining the task as Manual, only manual dates will be considered.
You must write the instructions exactly as shown above, respecting upper and lower case.
You must also write the end date as: 2024-12-29T23:59:00 and not as: 2024-12-29T23:59:59, in which case it will skip to the next day and count one more day when importing the schema file.
Going back to your initial request, it would look like this:
<Name>Testing</Name>
<Type>0</Type>
<IsNull>0</IsNull>
<WBS>3</WBS>
<OutlineNumber>3</OutlineNumber>
<OutlineLevel>1</OutlineLevel>
<Priority>500</Priority>
<ManualStart>2024-12-26T00:00:00</ManualStart>
<ManualFinish>2024-12-29T23:59:00</ManualFinish>
<Manual>1</Manual>If you consider that it has been useful and sufficient, you can close the query by clicking Solved.
Ignacio
saleemullah054,
Why would you want a summary line to be manually scheduled when all subtasks are auto-scheduled? That makes no sense. A summary line is NOT a task, it is simply a summary of subtasks under it. The start date of a summary line will be the start date of the earliest subtask and the finish date of a summary line will be the finish date of the latest subtask under it. According to the resulting Project file shown in the screen shot of your original post (see below), that's exactly what you get and should get. What am I missing?
John
Hi there !
Thanks for your input, why would i only want my summary task to be manually scheduled ? Well, I dont. All I really want is my summary task dates to be independent of its child tasks dates. Ignacio suggested me to set my summary task as manual for that, which i simply followed. Please go through the thread to have even more clear idea
How about explaining what you want to achieve. It feels like you might be better off with Excel if you do not want to either use manually scheduled tasks and set the dates yourself, nor use automatic which will make the summary task follow the dates of the child tasks (the definition of a summary task). I've read the thread, so don't just ask me to read again. What is your end goal? Where did the XML come from and what are you trying to do? I still think you need to understand calendars, scheduling and Microsoft Project better if it isn't doing what you need it to.
saleemullah054,
Okay, let me rephrase the question. Why do you want the summary line to be independent of child tasks? That's the part that makes no sense. If you are looking for some type of "baseline" for child tasks, then you're missing the point of how Project works. Project has a whole bunch of Baseline fields. They establish data points (e.g. dates, cost, etc.) that represent the original plan. Baseline data is used to measure plan performance (e.g. Start variance, Cost variance, etc.). If you are simply looking for a "stake in the ground", Project has a Deadline field especially for that.
So again, why do you want the summary line to be independent?
John
Hi there,
The reason I want the summary tasks to be independent is that I need to migrate my project data from a Gantt tool to Microsoft Project. My project data spans over 6-7 years, so I wanted to migrate it to a more stable tool. In my project file, most of the summary tasks are independent of their child tasks, and I don’t want to disturb the schedule and therefor before importing the original file, I need to make sure that my summary tasks stay independent. This is not something that Microsoft Project doesn’t support. I created test data within MS Project, and it was successfully created, heres the screeenshot of ithere you can see, child tasks have scheduled till 23 and still I am able to schedule my summary task till 24. I want this same functionality with import as well.
Saleemullah054,
Apparently the "summary tasks" in the Gantt tool you were using represent something different than what a summary line means in Project. As I said and as Brian said, summary lines in Project are created from the subtasks, they are not independent items. And again, in Project, a summary line is NOT a task.
Indeed you can import your data using the process Ignacio outlined and it looks like you've figured that out (i.e. import summary line data as a manually scheduled item).
So, are we done here?
John
