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Merlin2 dynamic date constraints?

Is there a forum for ProjectWizards Merlin2 app anymore? They took their forums down just before I started using the product in August '06. I've e-mailed the developers this question, but maybe someone here knows an answer.

I've come to wonder whether its possible to create a start or end constraint based on a dependency. I often have two tasks that I want to end at the same time, but for which each has drastically different predecessor activities.

In these cases, I want event A, which is the primary catalyst for action to drive the completion date of event B. So, I link them with a Finish-Finish (FF) dependency. Event B has it's own set of tasks that need to be completed in before event B can be started. What I'd like to do is "lock" the FF dependency between Event A and B so that B's predecessor events can be set to "As Late As Possible" to generate notes in the report when they need to be started. The "As Late As Possible" function only appears to honor hardcoded planned dates.

Today I can only do this via hardcoding of the latest end date. The problem is that I need to hardcode the event date for every single task. To give you a real world example, I have colocation suites that have delivery dates. I want to align five or six tasks to the colocation delivery date. But those dates slip, so as I move the colocation dates out, I need to also go and move out the dates of each of the 5-6 tasks I want to line up with the end of the colo delivery. In practice, this doesn't work very well. It would be much easier if I could just push back the colo delivery date and have that trickle down to the FF tasks I've defined along with it. All the predecessor tasks for each of those 5-6 tasks will move along with it.

Can this be accomplished today?

TOPICS: Mac OS X

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