Date Formulas

[patrick - md]

I am trying to find a way to set a start and finish date based on other tasks.

I have 3 design tasks 18, 35 and 40. I would like to create a single
"milestone" task that looks at these tasks and determines what the first
start date is and what the last finish date is?

For example:

Task 18 has a start date of 4/1/2010 and a Finish date of 4/30/2010

Task 35 has a start date of 4/15/2010 and a Finish date of 5/15/2010

Task 40 has a start date of 4/23/2010 and a Finish date of 5/29/2010.

I would like to create a task called "Milestone - Design" and look at the
start dates of the tasks and select 4/1/2010 as the Start Date since it is
the earliest date of the three tasks and select 5/29/2010 as the Finish date
since is the lastest finish date of the three tasks.

We are using Project Professional and Server 2003.

Any suggestions?

thx.

 

[Rob Schneider]

Patrick,

I'm a little concerned that you are maybe using Project not as it is
intended. Can you please elaborate more on what you are trying to do?

Some comments:
: Milestones are normally tasks of zero duration; yet you are trying to
create one which has a duration? What is the purpose of this so-called
"Milestone?"
: Have you looked at putting the three Design Tasks inside a summary
group called "Design" and let the start and end of the Summary be the
overall duration of the design?
: Are you inputting these design start/finish dates, or letting Project
compute these for you? (the latter the right way).


--rms

www.rmschneider.com

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

Building off of what Rob mentioned, you may be able to accomplish a similar
goal by just rolling up the dates. To do this, I would create a custom flag
field, let's call it Flag1. Then set two date fields to capture the Start
and Finish dates for each task flagged with Flag1.

The formula would look like this:
IIF([Flag1]=Yes,[Start],ProjDateValue('NA'))
IIF([Flag1]=Yes,[Finish],ProjDateValue('NA'))

Then set the custom field to roll up to the Summary Level as the Min/Max
as appropriate. When you display the Project Summary bar, that will roll
the appropriate dates up to the top for reporting values.

Failing that, you can use the ol' Paste Special trick to paste a date from
one task to another.

- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm