Linking project plans together..?

Is there a way to link multiple project plans together? For example, if I have three different projects but wanted to manage them from a high level in a Master Plan schedule. So that the Master Plan could be used for reporting to the board on progress rather than the finite detail.

Thanks in advance.

Hydrogenman!

You can place them all into a single project file.

Hi Dmitry,
thanks for getting back to me. Please can you elaborate further? Do you mean that I create a common folder with all the project plans in and then they can link to the master plan?

Many thanks,

Ian

Not sure what do you mean when you say ā€œfolderā€. I meant that you can create a single physical GanttProject file where every project is a top-level task.

Hi,
This is just what we did. We created a master-project with projects as tasks on the first sub-level (elaborated deeper on lower sublevels, as desired). Every project manager reported for his project/task in this master project.
The only problem we had to overcome was that GP does not (or does it?) control the number of copies that can be opened from the same file. So, every project manager could in principle open-edit-save his copy and override what others may have saved before. A master project with three-or-so projects should be manageable, but we have more than 20 joined into one, which would be a nightmare.
We solved this by placing our master project in our document management system, which prevents opening multiple copies for editing and it works fine.
Hope this helps a little.
And again, thank you for this excellent SW, Dmitry. ŠœŠ¾Š»Š¾Š“ŠµŃ†!!!

Hi Pipi,

Thanks for that feedback, that was really useful. That is the conclusion I have drawn as well.
In the notes section what I have done is put the file paths to the ā€˜detailedā€™ project plans so it is easy to relate to them whilst working in the Master plan.

Cheers,

Ian

@DmitryBarashev I was thinking about this point, too (and other people either: Can u include one project in another?). Up to now, Iā€™m exporting as .png and manage all projects in my DTP software on a timeline (which I create with GanttProject either). This is not the best way to handle this, I know. But handling a all-in .gan file for all projects isnā€™t either!

So my question to you:
Would it be easy to extend the import feature a bit? Up to now I can only import one .gan file at once. If I could import as many .gan files as I select in the order of the selection, one could easily create a Ā»master project planĀ« from all sub project files.
Or could there be a Ā»import multiple .gan filesĀ« plugin to GanttProject?

Thanks, Tobias

FWIW, GanttProject Cloud, which is currently in beta testing, allows for document locking, detects document overwriting and supports document revision history. If you work in such highly concurrent environment, it may really help.

Dear Dmitry,

that sounds a lot like it. The only obstacle, I fear, may be that when the IT environment is closed, like ours, it may not allow users to interact with outside environment. It happened to us with e.g. Google Drive and Dropbox and I doubt it would treat GP Cloud differently.

FWIW: a while ago we changed our environment to Win10/Office 365/Sharepoint. They all seem to be very temwork-supportive, so I tried to integrate GP in these systems (uploaded a .gan file and tried to share them with others). MS Teams failed completely, (did not recognize the format at all) and so did One Drive (does not have the ā€œshareā€ option). I wonder if anybody has tried it with more success - or is it not doable?

(And yes, Iā€™m glad to be back in the GP club. After a few months of pushing and waiting, GP has finally been released for use by our IT.)

Best,

Alojz

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Thanks, thatā€™s an interesting idea.

Should I file a feature request on github on this as a reminder for you?

@DmitryBarashev Also very interested in this functionality. I love Gantt Project, and Iā€™d really like more of the disciplines in my projects to use it too. @twa 's suggestion would go a long way in making that easier.