Copy partial project

[Earl L]

I used the "copy partial project" tool/option from the project context menu and the action completed successfully, but it doesn't display the project tasks in the project tasks pane of the UI. I can tell that the process completed successfully by viewing the Gantt chart and I can see the project tasks there. I'm actually copying an entire project, which has tasks and subtasks, so I can effectively use it as a template.

We are currently on glide-calgary-02-15-2013__patch2-hotfix5-09-16-2013.

Anyone tried this and have similar/different results?

[Anurag Tripathi]

Hi Earl,

I struggled with something similar last year. The OOB functionality is pretty limited, it only copies the projects and not any related record and not any custom fields on the project also.

So we created our own copy project actions which copies all the fields of our choice and the project tasks also. we also use a template based model so implementing it was easy.

[kellykaufmann]

I've used this many times and don't have any issues. Note that in the project tasks (not GANTT), it's just going to show one level of tasks at a time. So if you copied a header task it's just going to show that one tasks, then you have to dig into that task to see the sub-tasks. Alternatively you can enable hierarchical lists in Project so you can just click on the arrow next to that header task and see all the subtasks.

[Earl L]

I found my trouble, at least for the circumstance I'm dealing with. Since the popup window that you use to search for the "partial project" allows you to search/use full projects I just tried to use a complete "template" project that I created for this purpose, assuming it would insert the full project as a child to the current project. It does not do this in the way I expected, although it does complete a successful operation.

What it does is add the full project as a new separate project, along with all of it's tasks and subtasks, and it makes that new project a child project of the current project, but that child project does not appear in list of project tasks.

What I did to resolve this is created my "template" project with all of the tasks/subtasks/sub-subtasks and I made sure to create one single project task that contained all of the others. Then when I want to create a new project plan based on this template I simply search for that container task and everything below that level comes over quite nicely. The only downside is I have this "artificial" container task that ends up in my project but I just label it "Phases" and that seems to be acceptable at this point.

Now I just need to start actually working through plans that I create this way and see if they work out the way I'm hoping.

Earl

[kellykaufmann]

Yes, Earl, sorry I failed to mention that! That is exactly how we are copying project content as well. Plus, creating one 'header' task (which we just title "x project tasks") across the duration of the project (with all tasks below that) also eliminates that SN changes the project start/end date according to the task dates (This is helpful to me when dealing with fixed-date tasks & projects)

Another thing I'm doing...instead of creating a bunch of 'template' projects..I just create one 'template' project (with that name). And then I have a first level task for each type of project schedule 'template' I need to pull from. I'm having different teams use this template project for that reason, giving them the instructions of creating a first level header then all their subtasks below there.

BTW, you may want to join the PPM User Group.