Serious Problem

[Genohem]

Hi everyone, im in a very unusual situation. I have 4 projects and i need to
consolidated all of them. Im going to work in a main/master project. In this
project im gonna make all the changes that i need to adjust for my other
projects. I have a question.

In the master project i have a list of companies and the task that we are
following with them, and in my others projects i have a detailed information
of the list of companies mention in the master project. For example, in DECO
Company i have a numbers of task and subtask, and in my main project i have
DECO Company but only the percentage of cover task. I want to know if exists
the facillities to change the start date and end date in the main project and
in the same time in my others projects.

Note: in the individual projects i dont have a start/end dates field, i
assign it with the task information, it means, i put it manually.

 

[John]

Hi everyone, im in a very unusual situation. I have 4 projects and i need to
consolidated all of them. Im going to work in a main/master project. In this
project im gonna make all the changes that i need to adjust for my other
projects. I have a question.

In the master project i have a list of companies and the task that we are
following with them, and in my others projects i have a detailed information
of the list of companies mention in the master project. For example, in DECO
Company i have a numbers of task and subtask, and in my main project i have
DECO Company but only the percentage of cover task. I want to know if exists
the facillities to change the start date and end date in the main project and
in the same time in my others projects.

Note: in the individual projects i dont have a start/end dates field, i
assign it with the task information, it means, i put it manually.

Genohem,
It's a little difficult to follow what you are saying but let's see if I
understand the overall idea. You have 4 individual projects that
describe a schedule of tasks being performed by each of 4 companies. You
do not mention if there are any dependencies between tasks of each
company but if so, those should be handled by external links between
individual project files. You then want to build a consolidated master
of all four individual files. The master will have no tasks of its own,
it will simply be a consolidation of the 4 subprojects. Does that
capture the essence?

As long as you build a dynamic master, (that is the default when you go
to Insert/Project), when you make a change to the tasks shown in the
master they will be reflected in the subprojects and vice versa.

One thing you mentioned bothers me. You indicate that you are manually
entering dates for tasks instead of letting Project calculate them for
you based on task durations and links. If you are simply entering start
and finish dates for a list of tasks, you might as well do that in Excel
because you are essentially defeating the reason to use Project, that
is, to help define and manage a dynamic schedule. You might want to go
to our MVP website at: http://project.mvps.org/links.htm
and take a look at fellow MVP, Mike Glen's tutorials. Mike series
explains some good ways to set up a project plan and maintain it.

John
Project MVP

 

[Genohem]

Hi John thanks for your time, the true is that i speak spanish but im going
to try to explain my issue more detailed

In part you get why im trying to tell you, but let see if i can give you
more information. I have these 4 projects, as you say i want to consolidate
in one project.
For example project 1 have the following fields: client, % completed, name
of the product, and the amount of money.

In the other project lets call project 2 i have these fields: Name of the
Project, start/finish field, predecessors and resources names.

I want that any change made to Project 1 change at the same time in Project
2. But not all the fields mentioned before, only for example start/finish
fields. But it's not easy because in Project 1 i dont have start/finish
fields, what i made is that i take one company for example deco company and i
do right click and i go to task information and go to General Tab, there i
put the start and finish dates and then project apply the changes make it.

I want that the new dates that i introduced in task information (in project
1) change in the start/finish fields in project 2.

Remember that project 1 i dont have start/finish fields
and in project 2 i have both fields.

 

[John]

Hi John thanks for your time, the true is that i speak spanish but im going
to try to explain my issue more detailed

In part you get why im trying to tell you, but let see if i can give you
more information. I have these 4 projects, as you say i want to consolidate
in one project.
For example project 1 have the following fields: client, % completed, name
of the product, and the amount of money.

In the other project lets call project 2 i have these fields: Name of the
Project, start/finish field, predecessors and resources names.

I want that any change made to Project 1 change at the same time in Project
2. But not all the fields mentioned before, only for example start/finish
fields. But it's not easy because in Project 1 i dont have start/finish
fields, what i made is that i take one company for example deco company and i
do right click and i go to task information and go to General Tab, there i
put the start and finish dates and then project apply the changes make it.

I want that the new dates that i introduced in task information (in project
1) change in the start/finish fields in project 2.

Remember that project 1 i dont have start/finish fields
and in project 2 i have both fields.

Genohem,
First let me clarify something. If you create a plan in Project, all
fields exist, whether you chose to show them or not. In that regard,
your project 1 DOES have Start and Finish fields. Furthermore, if you
make a change to a field that happens to be displayed as a column in a
view, other fields are likely to change whether you display them or not.
For example, if you only display the Start field and make a change to
it, even though the Finish field may not be displayed, it will be
changed because start and finish are related by the duration.

OK now this is what I don't understand. In project 1 you say you have a
client field, % complete field, name of product field and amount of
money field. Only one of those is actually a field and that is the %
Complete field. What you are really telling me is that you have given
your own names to other Project fields. For instance, are you perhaps
using the Task Name field for the client? How about the name of product
title, what field is that? I assume you are referring to the Cost field
when you say the "amount of money" field but maybe you are using some
other field.

Project 2 sounds a little more like a normal project. It has a task name
(i.e. name of project), a start and finish, predecessors and resource
names. So that makes sense.

But now I am having trouble understanding exactly what you are trying to
do. It sounds like you are using project 1 to simply hold some related
data and that could be more easily accomplished with spare fields in
project 2. How are project 1 and project 2 related? In other words, why
should start and finish dates in project 1 impact the start and finish
dates of project 2?

It might be easier to help you if I could see your files. If you are
using a Spanish version of Project, it won't help me because
unfortunately I do not speak Spanish. But, if you are using the English
version of Project, maybe you could send me your files and we could go
from there.

John
Project MVP
jensenj6atatcomcastdotdotnet
(remove obvious redundancies)