Christophe from PathToSharePoint commented on my previous post, asking “how does SP deal with MS Project summary tasks?”. I thought I would show what it does here, as it’s quite interesting and illustrates another new feature of the SharePoint 2010 Project Tasks list – the Summary Task content type.
Users of Microsoft Project will be aware that you can easily create summary tasks to act as a container which groups sub-tasks together. On the Project 2010 ribbon you will see “indent” and “outdent” options – the picture below shows “Indent Task” which will indent selected tasks and make them subtasks of the nearest preceding task at a higher level:
You can see this in action in the sample project below, where the three tasks concerned with mobile development have been indented and made subtasks of Phase 2.
So, what happens when we sync this with our SharePoint 2010 Project Tasks –
As you can see, I have a new Summary task item for Phase 2, and if click on the hyperlink to drill down further, I get to see the subtasks:
This is all made possible because a SharePoint 2010 Project Task list actually includes a second “summary task” content type:
Which is actually a folder with appropriate project task metadata – and Project 2010 uses this when synchronising. Here is list view of the same project task list, which shows the Phase 2 folder more clearly:
So there you go Christophe – and thanks for all your efforts on PathToSharePoint!
Thanks Derek!
Makes me wonder if I could apply this folder trick to SP 2007…
[...] SharePoint 2010 Project Tasks – Summary Tasks (WorkerThread Blog)Christophe from PathToSharePoint commented on my previous post, asking “how does SP deal with MS Project summary tasks?”. I thought I would show what it does here, as it’s quite interesting and illustrates another new feature of the SharePoint 2010 Project Tasks list – the Summary Task content type. [...]
Hi,
How I can ses all the Tasks and have Phase 2 and child items seen on the same screen in a hierarchial manner in Sharepoint 2010?
Thanks
Because the summary task is a SharePoint folder I don’t think this is possible.
There is a new SilverLight web part from TeamDirection which might give you what you want – http://www.teamdirection.com/igwebpart/index.html
Derek
I am veiwing my Main Project Task list (in sharepoint 2010) in Gantt Veiw (default view given by Sharepoint 2010).
I created the items of Main Task list using summary task option given in Add Item in ribbon.
While in Gantt Veiw i get items of main task list as hyper link but i cannot see the sub tasks when i click on that hyperlink.
Every time i have to change the veiw to All Tasks to get the hyper link working.
Also when iam veiwing the subtask list of main task list, i cannot set the default veiw to Gantt Veiw.
Any Solutions to get the hyperlink of main task list working in Gantt Veiw? I works fine when i switch the veiw to All Tasks.
Also i want to set the veiw of sub task list to Gantt Veiw as default.
I do not want to use third party Gaint Web Parts.
Amien
I have seen the hyperlink issue myself, when accessing a project Gantt with a browser other than Internet Explorer. Are you using FireFox or Chrome by any chance? I’ve noticed the issue with both of these browsers, whereas in IE8 and IE9 the hyperlink seems to work fine.
Derek
Thank you sir. I was veiwing in FireFox. Its working fine with IE. Thanks for the reply
Thank you!
I am using SharePoint 2010, and I spent about twenty minutes Googling for information on how to create subtasks. You were the first person to actually spell out how to do it in SharePoint (vs. Project synched with SharePoint).
–Rachel
Glad you found it useful. By the way, it’s worth taking a look at the enhanced sync features in Project 2010 Service Pack 1 which you can read about here.
Derek
I have a mixed All Tasks View. Some of the tasks are stand alone tasks and some of the tasks are Summary Tasks. I would like to create a View that displays the Summary Tasks with their subordinates.
Is the summary task in SP2010 supposed to auto-populate its start and end date based on the start date of the first sub-task and end date of the last sub-task underneath it. I have created a summary task and sub-tasks for it, but the start and end date on summary task remains blank which makes it not so useful.
PS –
If you are using MS Project 2010 with the SharePoint list then when you re-sync within MS Project the summary task will reflect the dates and % complete of the sub-tasks.
I don’t think there’s any way to make this happen automatically in SharePoint though…
Mike,
I haven’t had any success with that using “out of the box” view options. You might want to take a look at the IntelliGantt web part from TeamDirection which might fit the bill.
Derek
I’m struggling with the Summary tasks. for example if I have a summary task named Task1, which has 2 subtasks Tasks1.1 and Task1.2, i need to show the subtasks as Task1- Tasks1.1. Is there any way i can do this?