Show predecessors to tasks in other projects in Table and Gantt views

In Table and Gantt views, I want to view predecessors for tasks within a project that are linked to tasks in other projects.

As an example issue, let's say I am working on a project for Customer Alpha and that project has a task with 3 predecessors, Task A, Task B, and Task C.  Task A and Task B are tasks within my project, but Task C is a task in a different project.  In my project's Table and Gantt views, the Predecessors field only shows me Task A and Task B but NOT Task C.  This is misleading.

If I make changes in my project and allocate my example task to another staff member so it can get done earlier, I won't always get the result I expect because there's no indication in the Table and Gantt views that Task C may be influencing it.

A support team member told me "you should group projects in a way, so that you can open a parent project and see all tasks from subprojects in a single place."  That's not very effective if I have even a moderate number of projects, each with a number of tasks.

We often have multiple projects for a customer, and we have internal projects that create common resources used by multiple customer projects, so if I take the "super project" approach, I might have 10+ projects each with over 100 tasks.  Having THOUSANDS of tasks in my "super project" to make sure I can see all the dependencies isn't effective.

The support team member told me I could create a Custom Field that I can manually fill in with the dependency information, but that seems counter to one of Wrike's main value points - to automate as much of project management as possible. 

I understand that the Table and Gantt views display task dependencies as numbers relative to the lines in the current view, but that's misleading when there are dependencies to tasks NOT in the current view.

At a minimum, I should be able to create a Custom Field that counts the number of Predecessors (or Successors) automatically so I can see when there are dependencies not shown in my current view.  I can't do that today because the Custom Field formula capability can't access the Predecessors/Successors.

Ideally, the Table and Gantt view Predecessor/Successor fields would show all the dependencies for a task, even if they are not in the current view.  This could be as simple as "5FS, 8FS, Link FS" for my example, where Task A is on line 5 and Task B is on line 8 of the current view.  "Link" would be a link to the task in another project.

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2 comments

It's important to note that this also impacts projects with task hierarchies.  Even within a project, if you use subprojects to implement common hierarchies (we do this for standard aerospace and defense work breakdown structure - WBS - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure), if you open the subproject the Table and Gantt views no longer show the dependencies on tasks in other subprojects within the project.

So if my example task is under WBS 03.03 (2nd level of the hierarchy) and Task A is within the same scope/subproject but Task B is under WBS 02.02 (and Task C is in a different project per the original post), when you have the project open at the top level, the Predecessor field will show Task A and Task B but NOT Task C.  If, however, you open WBS 03 (a subproject), now the Predecessor field only shows Task A (and NOT Task B or Task C).

Showing the example a different way:

Customer Alpha Project XYZ

01. WBS Level 1 (a subproject)
02. WBS Level 1 (a subproject)
    02.01. WBS Level 2
    02.02. WBS Level 2
        Task B
03. WBS Level 1 (a subproject)
    03.01. WBS Level 2
    03.02. WBS Level 2
    03.03. WBS Level 2
        Task A
        Example task (predecessors = Task A, Task B, Task C)
04. WBS Level 1 (a subproject)

Common Project DEF

    Task C

 

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Hey Tim Skutt! 🙋🏻‍♀️ Thank you for explaining your feedback with those helpful examples. Your suggestion about showing a simplified indication of external dependencies (like "5FS, 8FS, Link FS") is an important one. I will make sure to forward it to our product team. 👍🏽

Basudha Sakshyarika Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Basudha Sakshyarika Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

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