WBS Numbering for external tasks

[Shane]

When you link a task in one schedule with a task in another schedule,
that external task shows in the orignial schedule grayed out. If you
show the WBS field in the view, the external task's WBS number comes
with it. Even though the external task's WBS number shows in the WBS
column, the original schedule counts that line when figuring the WBS
for the schedule. For example, if I link line 3 to an external task,
the WBS will look like this:
1
1.1
1.2
6.4.11
1.4
Line 4 is the external task. But, as you can see, WBS number 1.3 is
missing because that is where the external tasks is. Is there a way to
ignore the external tasks when figuring the WBS? Simply not showing
the external task will not renumber the WBS.
Thx.

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

The only way I could think of to do this is to set the WBS to manual - and
define the values yourself.

Here's a blog post on the topic:
http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/ep...telligent-wbs-codes-in-microsoft-project.aspx

 

[Ben Howard [MVP]]

I keep piggybacking on Andrew's excellent posts. The reason it is greyed out
is exactly because it is an *external* task, and therefore is not part of the
project's WBS, rather is it a link to an external depedency. If you need
external tasks as part of your own WBS, then you'll need to manually define
it, but it is not true to the nature of the WBS!