Audience

System administrators, project managers, project schedulers

Benefits

• Add task dependencies using predecessor by number
• Edit/save custom Task List views
• Apply task dependencies

Transcript

There’s another way to add task dependencies using the predecessor by number feature. This is popular with Microsoft Project users. First, you will need to add a couple of columns to your task list.

Click on the page display options icon. You’ll need to add the task ‘Number’ column from left to right. You can shortcut by typing in the first letters of the column that you’d like to add. If you would like to place it above a particular field, highlight that field, then double click it. This will place it where you want it, saving you clicks.

The second column you’ll need is the predecessors by number column (Pred. By #). Again, double click it to place it directly above the highlighted field. 

Notice under ‘Quick Selection’ you’re invited to save this view. You can do this by clicking the edit pencil icon and giving it a name, then click save. If you’re an administrator and you’d like to share that with other team members, select the check box ‘Available As Global View.’ If you prefer this view, you can make it your own default view.

Next click the update display icon. Notice how the columns have been added.

Now I’m going to go to tools and expand all of my summary tasks so that you can see the task numbers. Notice that we already have some of our predecessors that we added previously. If we’re adding another task to ‘Phase 2’ we can go ahead and put in the duration and work just like before and we can add the predecessors later, or we can add them here by number. Simply double click on that line or leave it gray, and type in the number of the task that you’d like to be the predecessor.  In this case, we’ll pick task 13. If you leave it blank, it will make this task dependency a finish to start. Alternatively, you may type in start to start (13ss) or type in start to finish (13sf), or any of the other task types. Then click Enter or Save. It’s that easy.