How do you limit a recurring 2-day dependent task to never start on a Friday

bikeologist27

I have a series of recurring tasks that can start on any day of the week, but the 3rd task in the series is two consecutive days and can't start on a Friday. How do I set this up?

Genevieve P.

Hi @bikeologist27

Are you using a Project Sheet with Dependencies enabled? If so, I would suggest making Friday one of the Non-Working days in your Project Settings:

This way any dependent tasks that are starting after a task that finishes on Thursday will start on Monday.

See: Define Working Days, Non-working Days, and Holidays on a Project Sheet

However this does also mean that if the task started on Thursday it will skip over Friday and say that it ends on Monday, would that work for you?

Cheers,

Genevieve

bikeologist27

Hi Genevieve--Looks like I've been complicating things by trying to be too brief. Here's what I want to do: I have as series of 3 tasks (A,B,C) to do in order, each dependent on the previous one, Task B can't start on a Friday, Task C starts right after Task B.

The start date of this series changes frequently. It's not problem when A starts on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday--like this:

When I have to move the series to where A starts on Thursday, how can I get B to start on Monday, and C on Wednesday? I don't want to delay A.

Sometimes A is dependent on a previous task too, so it would save a significant amount of time to move all of these as a unit. The dates change very frequently.

Genevieve P.

Hi @bikeologist27

There wouldn't be an automatic way to do this (without adjusting the settings for the entire sheet/project). You would need to know what tasks cannot start on Friday and then update the Predecessors to add in Lag Time so that it starts on the Monday instead.

In your image above, you would want to change Task B to have a Predecessor of 1FS + 1d

This will not affect Task A at all, but it will make sure Task B starts on Monday, and Task C starts after Task B.

If this is a recurring set of tasks, you could potentially use a helper column to quickly raise a Flag if "Task B" has a Start Date on Friday. The WEEKDAY Function can assess a Date cell and return a number for what day of the week the date is... ex:

=IF(WEEKDAY(Start@row) = 6, 1, 0)

If you put this formula in a Flag symbol column, it will raise a flag for any row that has a Start Date on Friday. We can filter this down even more if your "Task B" has a consistent name:

=IF(AND(WEEKDAY(Start@row) = 6, Task@row = "Task B"), 1, 0)

Then you could set up Conditional Formatting in your sheet to highlight any rows that have the flag raised. This way you can quickly identify the ones you need to add Lag Time in the Predecessor column. Once you've updated it with the +1d, the flag will disappear and no rows will be highlighted.

Cheers,

Genevieve

Genevieve P.

Hi @bikeologist27

Are you using a Project Sheet with Dependencies enabled? If so, I would suggest making Friday one of the Non-Working days in your Project Settings:

This way any dependent tasks that are starting after a task that finishes on Thursday will start on Monday.

See: Define Working Days, Non-working Days, and Holidays on a Project Sheet

However this does also mean that if the task started on Thursday it will skip over Friday and say that it ends on Monday, would that work for you?

Cheers,

Genevieve

bikeologist27

Thanks for the suggestion Genevieve. Unfortunately, Fridays need to be available for all of the other tasks in the sheet. --Sally

Genevieve P.

Hi Sally,

Thanks for clarifying! If it's certain specific tasks that shouldn't start on a Friday, you can add Lead or Lag time to your Predecessor cell to push it out an extra day.

Ex. 1FS + 1d

Cheers,

Genevieve

bikeologist27

Hi Genevieve--Looks like I've been complicating things by trying to be too brief. Here's what I want to do: I have as series of 3 tasks (A,B,C) to do in order, each dependent on the previous one, Task B can't start on a Friday, Task C starts right after Task B.

The start date of this series changes frequently. It's not problem when A starts on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday--like this:

When I have to move the series to where A starts on Thursday, how can I get B to start on Monday, and C on Wednesday? I don't want to delay A.

Sometimes A is dependent on a previous task too, so it would save a significant amount of time to move all of these as a unit. The dates change very frequently.

Genevieve P.

Hi @bikeologist27

There wouldn't be an automatic way to do this (without adjusting the settings for the entire sheet/project). You would need to know what tasks cannot start on Friday and then update the Predecessors to add in Lag Time so that it starts on the Monday instead.

In your image above, you would want to change Task B to have a Predecessor of 1FS + 1d

This will not affect Task A at all, but it will make sure Task B starts on Monday, and Task C starts after Task B.

If this is a recurring set of tasks, you could potentially use a helper column to quickly raise a Flag if "Task B" has a Start Date on Friday. The WEEKDAY Function can assess a Date cell and return a number for what day of the week the date is... ex:

=IF(WEEKDAY(Start@row) = 6, 1, 0)

If you put this formula in a Flag symbol column, it will raise a flag for any row that has a Start Date on Friday. We can filter this down even more if your "Task B" has a consistent name:

=IF(AND(WEEKDAY(Start@row) = 6, Task@row = "Task B"), 1, 0)

Then you could set up Conditional Formatting in your sheet to highlight any rows that have the flag raised. This way you can quickly identify the ones you need to add Lag Time in the Predecessor column. Once you've updated it with the +1d, the flag will disappear and no rows will be highlighted.

Cheers,

Genevieve

bikeologist27

Thanks Genevieve!