Scenario : You have to track all those tasks which if delayed by 3 days (you can change the Total Slack value say 5 days) would fall on the ciritcal tasks path. So, these could be termed as the near critical tasks which need to be monitored closely along with the Critical path in the project to adhere to the commited timelines.
Total Slack is defined as : The amount of time a task’s finish could be delayed without delaying the Project’s finish date. Critical Tasks by default have 0 Total Slack.
Let’s create a view for these second level critical tasks, it could be done even directly in Gantt View itself, yet let’s create a view.
We want to define a view which :
•Displays the true Critical Path in the project using red Gantt bars for all tasks that have 0 days of Total Slack.
•Displays the “nearly Critical” Path for the tasks that have Total Slack less than 3 days.
•Highlight these tasks using in the table by background formatting.
•Display bars in the Gantt chart for these tasks in different color.
Create a Table named “Second level critical path.” You can either copy the current Entry table or create a new as needed.
Create a Filter “Second level critical path.” Give below parameters :
Create a View “Second Level Critical path.”
1. Table – Second level critical path
2. Group – No Group
3. Filter – Second level critical path
4. Select – Highlight Filter checkbox.
All ground work done for the view, once you apply this view you can see that all tasks with Total Slack less than 3 (but more than 0 to exclude critical tasks). Now when you apply this all near critical tasks get highlighted in the view.
Now we need to format the Gantt chart to display these tasks in different colored bars. Copied Total Slack into Number1 by using formula, then created Flag1 with formula as – IIf(([Number1]<3 And [Number1]0),1,0).
Now go to chart section -> right click -> bar styles give following values :
You can chose color from the below secction of the bars tab.
Now here comes an overall view where in the table we see tasks which have Total Slack less than 3days and can become critical if delayed beyond 3 days. In chart we can view Critical tasks, regular tasks and near critical tasks which if delayed beyond 3 days will fall on Critical path.