I have a project that has:
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Many milestones with a single variable - ie “[Variable] Polygons Ready for Database”, which translates to “[Oregon] Polygons Ready for Database”, “[Seattle] Polygons Ready for Database”, etc
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Each of these milestones has 3 tasks, which are also templatized - ie: step 1, step 2, step 3 for the [variable] milestone
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Each of these milestones is also blocking a final, unique milestone: Polygons are connected to Jurisdictions
What I was intending to do was:
- Create a project with 4 template tasks: 1 milestone template, 3 task templates
- W/in the templates, set the template tasks as blocking the template milestone
- W/in the template, set a dependency that the template milestone is blocking the unique milestone
What I’ve done:
- Created the relationships between existing tasks + converted to task templates - dependencies are missing from the task templates
- Created task templates in my project - dependencies error: no matches found in this template
- Created a project template, recreated the milestones w/in that template - same error
Screenshot for visual:
I’ve attempted to review the forum, but nothing I’m reading is providing a solution that works. I don’t understand why dependencies show up in the “task template” builder, if there’s no way to establish dependencies on a template.
Any help greatly appreciated!
Finally had something show up in the “dependencies” option of subtasks…
I don’t understand how this functionality is useful at all? I’ve always assumed that if there are subtasks, those are components of the parent task… So of course their blocking the parent task? And how on earth would a parent task block subtasks?
Regardless if this is useful functionality for others, Is there any way to add more functionality to these? I’m having to manually create 4 dependencies on each task that are annoyingly simple to overlook when doing them manually.
Hi @Amanda_Potter_Cole1 Welcome to the forum.
Thank you for going through this in detail.
Is there a reason you are using task templates rather than a project template ? With the milestones and tasks in it and using the dependencies in there?
Hi @Amanda_Potter_Cole1 , totally understand your frustration, as I’ve had some issues with something similar (i.e., wanting to templatize a group of tasks). In addition to @Danielle-GenD 's line of questioning/thought, one other option is to create a task template with your 3 tasks and 1 milestone as subtasks of the template. This will allow you to create dependencies between them, as I believe the reason you’re not able to create dependencies between different task templates is that they aren’t in the same scope, so they won’t “see” each other.
You can then instruct people to, upon using the singular task template, open up the resulting task, select all subtasks (3 tasks and 1 milestone), and drag/drop them into the desired section of your project as tasks and delete the now-empty parent task. This should preserve your dependencies, although I understand it’s not the most elegant solution.
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@Danielle-GenD - I have a project with a lot of repetitive tasks (getting GIS polygon + enrich with metadata for [name] geographic region)
I created a project template, and within that project I was creating template tasks that needed to have dependencies on each other + relationships with a milestone that was being created for each geographic region. The geographic region milestones needed to be connected to another milestone on another project.
Hi @Stephen_Li - Thank you for taking the time to offer a sugguestion, but it simply did not work for my needs at all. Making a subtask a milestone is not intuitive, nor does it allow me to create the relationships or tracking I need re: the milestone.
Apparently there is no way to create the relationships I’ve asked about within the template tools at this time.
What I ended up doing:
I turned the 3 task templates into 1 task with 3 subtasks, each with subtasks, which reduced the amount of manual relationships I have to build.
I’ve attached screenshots for anyone’s interest + also to demo where the conflict points are when using this method.
I’ve pulled the 3 tasks into 1 task with subtasks, and nixxed attempting to automate a relationship with a milestone
UI/UX feedback: navigating to the subtasks of subtasks is a bit tricky, which is why I had initially established as 3 separate task templates
UI/UX feedback: navigating between 3 layers of project, parent task, subtask is not ideal and another contributing factor of why I had originally established 3 separate task tempmlates
That said, my current process of one task template with template subtasks is working for us at this time. It’s just not what I was hoping for in the functionality of a template.
