Critical Tools (www.criticaltools.com) makes PERT Chart Expert and WBS Professional. I've used them since early versions with great outcomes. This week we had a unique problem that was solved indirectly by PERT Chart Expert.
We have a large collection of project files that are "collected" into a master file for sorting and analysis. Project does this collection through the "insert project" command to make a file that has links to the subfiles. This file has several annoying features not the least of which is indents all the subfiles over one level in the collected master file. That aside there are several tools (Critical Tools NOT being one of them) that do not work with "hyper linked" files. RISK+ is one of them and RISK+ is critical to our management processes.
The way around this is the build a single file from the collected files. Turns out this is easy for a small group of files with simple topologies. When the project get "real" with horizontal and vertical linking the first step is to split up the file into subprojects. The links between files then require "special" care not to create loops but also not hide the connections in the Predecessor or Successor fields. This is done through a "share" file (more later).
The killer problem is you can't write VBA to collect all the files into one when the predecessor and successor links exceed 256 charters. They are there in the task information field, but VBA access them through the actual field in the row. On any reasonable machine the the fully enumerated path name exceeds 256 charters for all the links. This was a show stopper.
PERT Chart Expert. You can open the collected file in PERT Chart and disconnect the PERT from the project file. Renumbering the task gets them all unique. Then the .MPP file of the collected projects can be saved into a new project file. This collects all the information for all the subprojects and builds a new master project will all the links (vertical and horizontal) in one place allowing RISK+ to run.
Critical Tools saved the day. We now know more than we every wanted to know about how Project 2003 is not yet Enterprise Ready. Maybe the upcoming version (2004?) will actual be able to deal with large enterprise programs. I sure hope so.
