Identifying Parent Tasks

Organize project tasks in a hierarchy of parent tasks and subordinate tasks to structure the component parts of a project.

Tasks can be one of the following:

Work task – A task record that tracks actual project activity, such as time worked.
Parent task – A task record that only tracks cumulative information about subordinate tasks that are required to complete a project.

For example, if you need to manage an installation project that is composed of 3 individual tasks, you can set up task records as follows:

First, create a task record for the installation. This task will become a parent task record after you identify it as the parent of other tasks.
Next, enter a work task for each of the three individual tasks. Identify each task as a subordinate of the installation task by selecting it as the parent.

Time employees spend working on the installation is entered on each child task record. Then, data for each child task is summed on the parent task record.

Note:

There must be at least one task already associated with the project before the Parent Task field appears.

Important:

A parent task cannot have resources assigned to it. This is because parent task records do not track work directly, they only track other tasks.

Parent task records track the following data sourced from its subordinates:

Start Date – the earliest start date of all subordinate tasks
End Date – the latest end date of all subordinate tasks
Estimated Work – the cumulative total estimated work for all subordinate tasks
Actual Work – the cumulative total actual work done for all subordinate tasks
Remaining Work – the cumulative total work remaining for all subordinate tasks
Percent Complete – the percentage of work completed for the task overall

If you use Resource Allocations, the Allocated Work and Percent Complete by Allocated Work fields are also sourced from parent task subordinates.

To set up parent and subordinate tasks, open the task record and select a parent in the Parent Task field.

When you view the task list on a project record, each parent tasks shows its subordinates indented beneath it.

Note:

If you use CRM Tasks with projects, please read Including CRM Tasks in Project Totals regarding task hierarchies.

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