How do I level by "Priority, ID" in Project 2007?

[Matt]

I want to be able to do custom leveling in Project 2007. I need the
equivalent of leveling by "Priority, ID". That is to say, leveling by
priority first, then by ID number.

Leveling by ID alone isn't helping, and the Standard leveling seems random
at times. I enter my tasks in a pseudo order by ID, then want to prioritize
only when necessary. I would use priority for each task, but I have WAY more
than 1000 tasks in the schedule.

Instead of "Priority, Standard" I want "Priority, ID". How do I accomplish
this?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Matt --

You can't. Your choices are limited to the three options available in the
Leveling dialog. Hope this helps.

 

[Jack Dahlgren MVP]

Matt,

You do not need to assign a unique priority to each task.

For example if you have tasks a,b,c which are linked by a series of
dependencies then no matter what priority you put on them, a will always be
before b and b before c.

Priority is only necessary as a tie-breaker.

If you have need to have tasks in a specific order, then use dependencies to
link them in that order and don't rely on leveling to do that for you.

Leveling is intended to move things around within the pre-defined schedule
logic. It is not a substitute for traditional schedule modeling using
dependencies.

-Jack Dahlgren

 

[Matt]

Thanks for both of the responses. Adding dependencies or linking tasks when
there is no real dependency is sloppy and I won't do it. I'll just have to
hope the ability to do what I need to do (without linking hundreds of tasks)
will be available in the next version of Project. For now I'll just go
through and set priorities.

Everybody I work with wants the feature I describe, or wants the ability to
write their own leveling algorithm. I am not alone.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question guys.

 

[Jack Dahlgren MVP]

You have the ability to write your own leveling algorithm.
Using VBA you can make project do just about anything you can do manually
and a lot more.
I've seen a couple of examples over the years.

-Jack