Characteristics of External Subproject Activities
Activities that you designate as external subprojects are identical to standard activities.
However, there are exceptions, which are as follows:
- The duration of an external subproject activity is calculated from the durations of the individual activities in the external subproject during time analysis.
- The progress information of an external subproject is based on the progress of the individual activities in the external subproject.
- After you have designated an activity as an external subproject, you cannot change the activity type while the external subproject is open.
- The effect of deleting an external subproject activity depends on whether the external subproject is open:
- If the external subproject is open, Open Plan closes the external subproject and deletes the external subproject activity.
- If the external subproject is not open, deleting the external subproject activity has no effect on the external subproject.
- When you expand an external subproject activity, Open Plan offers to open the external subproject.
- If you open the external subproject, it behaves in the same way as an internal subproject, enabling you to edit, delete, cut, or copy activities. You can also drill down into the external subproject to create additional activities and move existing activities to new locations.
- If a project contains a relationship to an activity in an unopened external subproject, Open Plan creates a temporary activity to represent the other end of the interproject relationship. These temporary activities are called foreign activities. Open Plan also creates foreign projects, where needed, to validate the ID of the foreign activity.
- Saving a master project with a new name converts all open external subprojects to expanded internal subprojects and saves them as part of the master project. This results in Open Plan converting the associated external subproject activities to internal subproject activities.
- When saving external subprojects from within a master project, Open Plan checks for the existence of a foreign subproject or foreign activity. If none exists, Open Plan sets a target project finish date for the external subproject. If necessary, Open Plan also sets a project target start to create a relationship with the external subproject activity.
The project start date that is created could overwrite a target start date previously set in the master project.
Note: Open Plan automatically saves any external subprojects as internal subprojects when you use the
Save As command to save project information. This automatic conversion also occurs the first time you save a new project. As a result, to set up a project hierarchy that includes external subprojects, you must first create and save the master project before converting any activities into external subprojects.