Task Dependency date concerns

[emailmae]

I cannot get this to work as I had envisioned without all the dates rolling back to 1970. I want to leave the dates blank and be filled in as the project is gone through.

Here is my task outline for the specific project template I need to get working.

1. Contract - completed once all three sub tasks are complete
1a. Contract Sent - effectively starting the project
2a. Contract Received - this is dependant on 1a, but the date will be determined by when the customer decides to get it back to us
3a. Payment Received - dependent on 1a/2a and again the date is on the customer

2. Campaign (step 1 must be completed entirely before this begins)
1a. Test sent
2a. approval received - depends on 1a. and the customer
3a. Campaign Started - depends on 2a.
4a. Tracking sent - depends on 3a, will start 48 hours after 3a.

I have tried making about 10 different templates, but none get this done just how i need it. I would appreciate any direction that can be given. Thank you.

[emailmae]

anyone out there that could give me some guidance on this please.

[caseydk]

I've run into this problem and have solved it once, but haven't been able to solve it again.

When you have a series of tasks that are dependent on each other (Dependency Tracking), they have to be saved in a particular order for it to work... I don't have a clue what that order is, but that's the problem...

[Xenophon]

I also have had difficulty with the creation of tasks and the propagation of start date changes through dependency tracking. If a task's schedule slips, and all of the tasks dependent on it have "Set task start date based on dependency" checked, they should all move, correct? This is not happening reliably. Should I file a bug?

Also, setting the first task in a project to a duration of 1 day causes the calculated finish date to be identical to the start date. Is anyone else noticing these things?

[pedroa]

Before anything test the tasks modules CVS files, and only then if you get to the conclusion that something is not right, come back and say it cleary.

Clearly means:

1) Explain cause of problem: We need to now how to replicate your problem, if we can't see it, only you have a problem, we don't.
Alongside give us info about your computer enviroment (OS, browser, webserver, php) fileversions when applicable, all things may be important, maybe only one little thing may be important, but you better give more info than lack info.

2) Explain the consequence: What's the misbehavior in your opinion, we may or may not agree, depending on that we may try to resolve or not.

I guess this intructions are here somewhere, but since nobody reads this days, I think it would help you in the future, and other users too.

Pedro A.

[augustorosa]

Pedro Sorry !!!

1. Questions are clear enough here !!!
How do "dependent tasks" update their "start dates" based on its "parents tasks"...

2. Also, how to work with CVS?
Do I have to dowload a file per time and substitute them manually?
This is a huge effort?!?

Why not to have all files in a .zip file to update everything at once???

3. CVS is necessary for new installation from Fantastico?

Newcomers simple don't know if it is a bug or an issue !!!

Tks,
Augusto.

[pedroa]

1. Parents have nothing to do with dependency (there is some confusion about this), see... a child task does not start when its parent ends.
Any task start date should be recalculated when this task is dependent of another and not when it is a child of another. Spoted the difference?
If you try to do both, I mean have a task B dependent of task A and is also a child of task A will lead you into an error. So learn that Dependent Tasks may not be Child Tasks of a same Task.
Parent Tasks group Child Tasks.
Tasks (in general) may be Dependent (means they depend on the conclusion of other tasks to start) of any other tasks but their Parents.

2. You can search for intructions on these forums about CVS (search TortoiseCVS) and how to get with one stroke. Or you can surf http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/dotproject/dotproject/ and get them one by one (I like this method because you can revert versions of specific files or get the most recent and less bugged ones hopefully).

3. I heard about Fantastico, but I really don't know what's in it, so most probably it has the major releases of dP, and 2.0 is from 1 April 2005 and dP 2.0.1 from 8 April 2005, my believe is that those files are allready old to say the least...
Bugs are reported here:
http://www.dotproject.net/mantis/main_page.php
So search it for your bugs, it might happen they are allready solved.

Pedro A.

[augustorosa]

For Newcomers...

I've acessed the CVS and there are a lot of modified files.
Even for a fresh installation is necessary to look for CVS files in order to have a more stable version.

I don't know exactly how to use that (I've updated the whole project myself with the CVS version), there are still some bugs, but task dependecies are working better.

However, I don't know if making a whole update I will be incurring in others problems ! Take care, I don't have a procedure how to use CVS in a safe manner.

Moreover, It seemes that some updates require to create new users in order to have all functionalities working.

Use this post as hint, I'm looking for secure information as well.

Augusto Rosauro.