Summary Level Recurring Task Showing as Unassigned

[Rick]

By default Project is smart enough to know that although no resource is
assigned to a summary task, the task is not unassigned. However, this seems
to break down with recurring tasks. All summary level recurring tasks are
showing up as unassigned in the resource usage view. Not to mention that the
hours associated with these summary level tasks in the resource usage view
does not match that in the gantt chart view.

Is this a known "feature" or are we doing something wrong?

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Rick,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

Where does it show that a summary is assigned or not? The Resource Usage
view does not show summaries. In that view, for recurring tasks, you're not
seeing the summary but all the individually assigned tasks. As for hours,
please note that, as with all summaries, the Duration shown is the working
time between the start of the first task to the finish of the last task, and
is somewhat an anomoly with recurring tasks.

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: <http://www.mvps.org/project/>

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on )

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

 

[Rick]

I agree that the Resource Uage view is not supposed to show the summary tasks
and is only supposed to show the individually assigned tasks, but here's an
example of what I'm seeing:

In the Gantt chart view I see a summary level recurring task called "Prepare
Communications". It has 56 recurrences, each of them assigned to a resource,
for a total Work of 448 hours with a total Duration of 265 days.

When I look at the Resource Usage view, the summary level task "Prepare
Communications" appears under the Unassigned category (the individual
occurances do not) with a total Work of 2208. I find the last part
particularly odd because the Work in this view is different than the Work in
the Gantt chart view. I also can tell that Project knows it is a summary
level task even in the Resource Usage view because the Start, Finish,
Duration, and Task Type fields are greyed out and uneditable in the Split
screen view.

Seems to me the code for the Resource Usage view is not properly handling
summary level recurring tasks.

 

[Mike Glen]

Hmmm... I can't reproduce your problem. For me, the summary recurring task
does not show under the Unassigned categore, only the individual tasks for
the appropriate resources.

I think we need to discover whether your project is at fault, whether it is
Project at fault, or whether it's your PC. Does the symptom occur with
other projects on this PC? Does it occur with this project on other PCs?
Does it occur with other projects on other PCs?

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

 

[Rick]

With further research, I have been unable to reproduce this problem (although
the problem still exists). I created recurring tasks on my PC and do not see
the problem.

In the workplan that has the problem (not created on my PC), there are some
recurring tasks with the problem and some without. I've compared correct
recurring tasks with the incorrect recurring tasks in the same workplan and I
can detect no difference in their settings. When I look at the Task Usage
view for the incorrect recurring tasks, hours show up for the summary tasks
on days for which there are no hours assigned to any subtasks. In a sense,
hours are just appearing at the summary task level. I can't edit or remove
the hours since they are at the summary task level only.

My next step is to have the owner of the workplan recreate the recurring
tasks which are having problems and validate that this resolves the issue.
Looks like I'll probably just chalk this up to one of those random occurrence
type of things.

 

[Mike Glen]

Sounds a good idea, Rick. Try saving a copy of the file and have a go
yourself to re-enter the recurring task to see what you get. Will you let
us know the outcome?


Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[Rick]

I did make a copy and re-enter the recurring task and it worked out fine.
I'll let you know if the owner of the workplan has any issues recreating the
tasks.