Activity must be in sequence

Try creating a Start activity with a calendar (week) set to work only on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 12-am to 1-am. Set the duration of this activity to a bit more than zero but equal or less than an hour, say 0.1h. Place this activity between the main activity and its predecessors.

The trick is that the Start activity cannot be of zero duration as zero duration activities or milestones in MSP do not follow any calendar. Just after making sure it works as expected make the duration of Start activity equal zero and you will find out it no longer works, then make it work by re-setting the duration to 0.1h.

Hi Rafael

Neat approach - I use a similar method to ensure that a new sub-contract package only starts on a Monday.

Are you saying that in MSP you can't put a calender on a milestone?

If so another reason why the product should be avoided.

Best regards

Mike Testro

Well you can assign a calendar to a milestone it but that it works as expected is another thing.

I heard before your approach, just keep repeating it when appropriate. There will always be newcomers and is better to reply with the answer rather than referring to old postings, some of which can become obsolete as software is improved.

Mike / Rafael,

Finally, amongst all its weaknesses, there is an issue where MSP is doing absolutely the correct thing from a theoretically point of view, i.e. doesn't respect calendars when it comes to milestones and then you also complain about MSP in this respect!

A milestone is defined as zero time and that means from a pure mathematical approach according to the infinitisimal theory (or whatever it is called) that it can take place anytime irrespective of any calendar.

However, I totally agree with you that it is ridiculous that Microsoft have taken such a strict approach when it comes to definition of milestones in a planning software system and that you instead have to use a solution like the one Rafael have given. Milestones should respect calendars.

In Dan's situation you can always modify the bar format for the 0.1hrs activity (or 1 min.) to look like a milestone, e.g. either manually or by the use of a Flag-field or remove them by filters.

Regards,

Bo     

Thank you for your time!

BR

Dan

Dan,

The best thing would be the use of a flag for this activity.  It could be called "keep it together" or similar. Or you can model this problem with maximal relationships. As you do not have these features in MS Project, the only thing you can do is to follow what the others proposed. I checked the Hungarian sites on MS project, what they propose is basically the same.

Miklós