Priority Fields
On the Resource Scheduling dialog box's Advanced tab, Open Plan allows you to specify up to three fields indicating priorities that are used as tie-breakers during resource scheduling.
You may enter any numeric or date field. Lower numbers or earlier dates have a higher priority. Negative numbers are allowed.
The default for the first priority tie breaker is set to Total Float. Since lower numbers have a higher priority than higher numbers, this tends to schedule the critical path first. In most cases, you should leave this priority because it tends to schedule in the shortest amount of time possible. (If critical activities are delayed, the project is automatically delayed by the same amount of time.)
If you are an experienced project manager, you may want to design your own priority system to control the scheduling of activities. Typically, you might define a numbering system based from 1 to 10 or, perhaps, 1 to 100. The numbering system and the range you use should be based on the size of the project and the degree of detail necessary. A field labeled Priority on the Advanced tab of the Activity Details dialog box is available for this purpose, but it would also be possible to specify a calculated field as a priority field.
If the in-progress priority option is selected, activities in progress always have the highest priority.
Special Purpose Priority Fields
Open Plan also provides two special-purpose priority fields that you can use for resource scheduling purposes: <Hierarchical Priority Field> and <Remaining Float>. You can see these in the Priorities fields lists on the Resource Scheduling dialog box Advanced tab.
Hierarchical Priority Field
With this option selected, resource scheduling schedules subprojects based on their priority levels within the hierarchy. On the other hand, if the regular priority field is selected, Open Plan ignores the priority of the parent subproject when scheduling the activity.
Consider the following examples:
| Example 1 |
|---|
| With the Hierarchical Priority Field selected, Open Plan first considers the priority of the parent subproject when scheduling the activity, resulting in the following scheduling order: |
| Activity ID | Priority | Schedule Order |
|---|---|---|
| A | 0 | |
| A.1 | 10 | 1 |
| A.2 | 12 | 2 |
| B | 1 | |
| B.1 | 11 | 3 |
| B.2 | 13 | 4 |
| Example 2 |
|---|
| With the regular priority field selected, Open Plan ignores the priority of the parent subproject when scheduling the activity, resulting in the following scheduling order: |
| Activity ID | Priority | Schedule Order |
|---|---|---|
| A | 0 | |
| A.1 | 10 | 1 |
| A.2 | 12 | 3 |
| B | 1 | |
| B.1 | 11 | 2 |
| B.2 | 13 | 4 |
Remaining Float
With this option selected, Open Plan calculates the remaining float of each activity during resource scheduling as the difference between the earliest feasible date and the latest start date. This remaining float is then used to assign a priority to the subproject or activity.