Changing WBS Data

MPM provides several utilities for making large-scale changes to the WBS Tree. These utilities are available on the Utilities menu. Most utilities can also be invoked using the mouse.

Be sure to back up your data before attempting to run any of the WBS utilities. This protects you from losing or disorganizing your data.

Use the WBS utilities to:

Specifying Replacement Characters

Each of these utilities requires you to specify replacement characters, which MPM uses for creating new unique WBS IDs. For each child element in the leg being copied, MPM replaces the same number of characters as was contained in their old parent ID. For example, assume the parent ID in the old leg contains two characters, and the new ID contains five characters. The first two characters of each child are replaced with the five-character new ID. All remaining original characters in the ID are retained. WBS 21-100 with replaced characters TEST becomes TEST-100. TEST-100 with replaced characters ZZ becomes ZZ-100. See the table that follows.

 

Old WBS ID

Replacement Characters

 

New WBS IDs

2X

21-100

21-200

21-300

TEST

TEST

TEST-100

TEST-200

TEST-300

12

12A

12B

12C

123

123

123A

123B

123C

TEST

TEST-100

TEST-200

TEST-300

ZZ

ZZ

ZZ-100

ZZ-200

ZZ-300

 

If the natural progression in the naming process would result in duplicate WBS IDs, MPM reports the error on the Processing Results report.

Processing Results Log and Report

MPM keeps a log of the processing results when using the WBS utilities. Each time you launch the WBS window, a new WBS session is started and a log file is created. When you invoke one of the WBS utilities and an error results, all errors of processes you request are stored in the log file and are displayed in the Report Viewer. If no errors result, the log file is automatically deleted when you close the WBS window.

If you have more than one WBS window open, you have more than one log file.

Printing or Saving the Log

If you run one of the WBS utilities and encounter an error, MPM displays the Report Viewer with the error. You can print or save the log file results using those options within the Report Viewer. When exiting the Report Viewer, if you have not saved its contents, MPM deletes the log file.