A Pop up for Impacted Milestones

[NKumar2010]

Hi, 

  I have a project file with over 2000 lines of interlinked tasks and milestones. The milestones are spread across those 2000 lines.  A top summary task of "Milestones" is created, which is a group of milestones. These milestones links to individual milestone in detailed schedule. 

Two questions: 

1. Is there a way that Top section milestone task automatically gets marked 100% when the respective milestone in detailed schedule below gets marked complete ? 

2. When the dates in detailed schedule changes, I want to see if there is an impact on the milestone (s).  Since milestones are spread out or are at the top of the file, it's not always feasible to scroll & check if there is an impact on milestone (i.e. it's highlighted).

       Every time if there is an impact on the milestone, If a window pops up, telling which milestones are impacted, it would be great. How can this be achieved?  Is there any other simpler way of knowing the impacted milestone without too much of scrolling ?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi NKumar
About point 1, I think there is no option you are looking for, except by running a macro.
Likewise, with point 2, it would be possible through a macro, although you would have to press a button before entering the data, and I don't know if that is useful to you.
Regards

[#3]

I would like to ask you to reconsider the initial approach of having that bunch of milestones in that section at the top of the list. I see that it is a common practice around the place, but I discourage it.
First of all, it is an unnecessary duplication of milestones that are already in the plan, and extra unnecessary work to link all of them as predecessors of the duplicates.
It appears to be a solution of a problem, but it creates more problems and more work such as you are exploring now. And it is not a problem that even really exists. To extract and display a selection or subset of the tasks, ie your milestones, the ones you are interested in, use a filter. Have you tried that?

[#4]

Hi Trevor.
From experience, I have to recognize that including a section of main and contractual milestones of the project in an upper area of the project, as used by NKumar, is a good practice, especially in projects with many tasks, and in which the end client, not very expert in Ms Project, requests the complete project schedule.

In this case, the stakeholder focuses his attention quickly and easily on what is most important to him. Furthermore, he usually avoids detailed explanations from the project manager about the logic applied in the precedence network, when it is secondary for the client.

Regards.
Ignacio Martín