What's the Deal with Hammocks?

[Bill B]

I have a problem with hammocks. It's not that I don't know how to create
them, it's that I can't figure out a place to fire off an event where I'm
sure that their duration has been fixed. If Icheck at the end of the
ProjectCalculate event, the hammock's dates and duration are not finalized.
I'm not sure if the dates are set until after my code (in an ActiveX dll)
has stopped running. I thought I could trap the WindowSelectionChange event
which seems to happen on the first mouse click after my code stops running
but the dates haven't changed there yet either.

Any thoughts?

Bill B

 

[Jack Dahlgren]

In my experience, events in Project are not something that I'd want to rely
on. Just looking at the warnings on some of them makes me worry.

The WindowSelectionChange event will not fire when changing the selection on
the right pane of a Task Usage or Resource Usage view or when changing the
selection within a node in the Network Diagram view.

The ProjectBeforeTaskChange2 event doesn't occur when timescaled data
changes, when constraint data in the Task Details Form changes, when a task
is split by manipulating its task bar on the Gantt Chart, when changes are
made to outline level or outline number, when a baseline is saved, when a
baseline is cleared, when an entire task row is pasted, during resource pool
operations, when inserting or removing a subproject, or when changes have
been made using a custom form.

Not only that, but the links used for Hammock tasks date back to ancient
history. It is quite likely that they are another undocumented exception to
events.

I've not had good luck with hammocks for a number of purposes and generally
work around them when I can. Sorry that this is not a positive answer...

-Jack Dahlgren

 

[Bill B]

Yeah, but what better way to model "Manager A is assigned 1 hour a day on
this series of (maybe-overlapping) tasks?"

Bill B

 

[Jack Dahlgren]

Yeah, but what better way to model "Manager A is assigned 1 hour a day on
this series of (maybe-overlapping) tasks?"

Bill B

Option 1: Make it a task which starts concurrent with the first task and
manage work/duration as required.
Option 2: Ignore it
Option 3: Reduce Max units for Manager A
Option 4: Assign Manager A to summary task

There are probably more.

Remember, the schedule is only a model.
All models are wrong.
Make the model only as complex as it needs to be.
Modelling reality is a full time job which leaves you no room to actually do
any work.

-Jack Dahlgren