About Creating Tasks

This topic describes the different ways available for creating tasks.

There are several ways to create tasks for projects and project templates.

You can add tasks to a project:

  • From scratch. When you add a task from scratch, the task's estimated start date is the same as the start date for the parent (the parent task for subtasks, the project's start date for top-level tasks). See Creating a Task from Scratch.
  • By using the "Quick Creation toolbar" when working with a project's schedule. See Working the Structured View.
  • By inserting another project. You can insert a project as a sibling to a task using Insert Existing Project Above; or as a subtask using Add Existing Project Below. Project Management adds the entire project in the specified location as a task, including its entire structure. See Inserting Projects as Tasks.
  • By copying a schedule (full, partial, or import) from another project. You can copy the entire structure or part of the structure from another one of your projects. When you copy tasks, bookmark URLs and deliverables are also copied. Assignees, dependencies, discussions, risks, and routes are not included.

The added tasks are created in the Draft state, no matter what the state is of the source task. The estimated start date for the new tasks is the same as the start date for the parent task. The durations are copied from the source tasks unless the duration exceeds the duration of the parent task. In this case, the duration of the copied task is set to the same as the parent task's. The parent task's duration is calculated based on all sub tasks. Therefore, if the duration of a copied task exceeds the parent task, then the parent task's duration will be recalculated accordingly. See Creating Tasks by Copying from Another Project.

You can create tasks by importing from a file. You can import an ASCII file to create tasks. The ASCII file must be delimited by tabs or commas. You can import the following types of files:

  • Microsoft Excel (save as tab delimited .txt or comma delimited .csv)
  • Microsoft Project (save as tab or comma with only the columns)
  • ASCII file (tab or comma)

The import file should be formatted the same as import files for creating projects. For details, see Project Importing.

When you import a task, dependencies set up for the root task are not imported. See Copying a Project from a File.

You can create tasks by copying them from a project template. You can copy tasks from a project template to any task that you have edit access for. You can copy an entire or partial structure from the template. The copied tasks include bookmark URLs, dependencies, and deliverables from the source tasks. For tasks that are associated with questions, the tasks are included or not included based on your response to the questions.

Because a project template schedule does not contain dates of its own, the estimated start and finish dates for all copied tasks are determined by the project and parent task dates. The system also factors any dependencies defined for the copied tasks. See Copying Tasks from a Project Template.

All these methods let you add tasks under the top level for which you have access or under a specific task within the structure. If you own the project or are a Project Lead for the project, the top level that you have access to is the project, so you can add top-level tasks or add subtasks at any level in the structure. If you are not an owner or lead but are assigned to a task, the top level that you have access to is that task. You can add subtasks under your assigned tasks or under any subtask under your assigned task.

You cannot add a subtask to a task that is in the Approval or Completed states.