Managing Estimated and Milestone Tasks
In Microsoft Project, milestones and estimated tasks are used to track planning uncertainty and project checkpoints.
- A milestone usually has zero duration and represents a critical project event or deadline.
- An estimated task has uncertain or provisional duration, marked until further clarification.
Understanding Estimated and Milestone Tasks
Aspose.Tasks for .NET provides APIs to check and manage whether a task is estimated or a milestone programmatically.
The Task class exposes the following fields of the Tsk type:
IsEstimated Type: Boolean (
true/false) Purpose: Defines whether a task is estimated.IsMilestone Type: Boolean (
true/false) Purpose: Indicates whether a task is a milestone.
Checking in Microsoft Project
In Microsoft Project, you can check whether a task is estimated or a milestone by:
- Opening the Task Information dialog (double-click the task in the Task Entry form)
- Looking for the Estimated flag or Mark task as milestone option
Example: Finding Estimated and Milestone Tasks
The following code demonstrates how to check if tasks are estimated or milestones using Aspose.Tasks for .NET:
1Project project = new Project("New Project.mpp");
2
3// Create a ChildTasksCollector instance
4ChildTasksCollector collector = new ChildTasksCollector();
5
6// Collect all the tasks from RootTask using TaskUtils
7TaskUtils.Apply(project.RootTask, collector, 0);
8
9// Parse through all the collected tasks
10foreach (Task task in collector.Tasks)
11{
12 string strEst = (task.Get(Tsk.IsEstimated)) ? "Estimated" : "Non-Estimated";
13 string strMileStone = (task.Get(Tsk.IsMilestone)) ? "Milestone" : "Non-Milestone";
14 Console.WriteLine(task.Get(Tsk.Name) + " : " + strEst);
15 Console.WriteLine(task.Get(Tsk.Name) + " : " + strMileStone);
16}This example iterates over project tasks and programmatically determines whether they are marked as estimated or milestones.
Key Notes
- Milestones are essential checkpoints in project scheduling and reporting.
- Estimated tasks allow project managers to plan with flexibility when durations are not finalized.
- Both flags improve schedule accuracy and help in risk assessment when analyzing project timelines.
FAQ
Q: Can a task be both estimated and a milestone?
- Yes. Although unusual, a task with zero duration can still be marked as estimated for planning purposes.
Q: What is the default milestone rule in Microsoft Project?
- Any task with zero duration is automatically treated as a milestone, but users can also manually mark tasks as milestones.
Q: Do estimated and milestone flags affect the critical path?
- Milestones influence the project’s scheduling checkpoints, while estimated flags are informational and do not directly affect the critical path.
Q: Does Aspose.Tasks support reading and writing these properties in both MPP and XML formats?
- Yes. Estimated and milestone properties are consistently supported across MPP and XML project formats.