[stephenrussett]

I am having some issues with the Critical Path. When i run critical path, the very last 2 activities and final mile stone get marked as critical path, but nothing else connected through dependencies gets marked as critical path. What would cause this in omniplan?

Thanks

[skwirl]

The critical path is the series of dependent tasks which, if any of their durations change, will cause the whole project's duration to change by pushing out the last task in the project.

Not having your project in front of me, here's a few things you can check in your project:

Make sure your tasks are connected by dependency connections. If they're not, a task that's delayed by a little bit may not delay your project end date and won't be considered a part of the critical path.

If a chain of dependent tasks have some gap of time between one another that can break the critical path. The reason for this is because if there's a gap of time, that means the task technically has some wiggle room before it starts to affect the project's duration. Once you close that gap of time the critical path will be visible again. How do you close up the gaps in time? That involves the task's scheduling setting which I'll explain below.

By default, all newly created tasks are set to start "As early as constraints allow". This is why new tasks automatically start at beginning of your project and not on the current day. Now, if you use your mouse and drag a task in the gantt chart to set a new start date or if you enter a start date manually into the start date field of the task, the scheduling is changed to start "On specified date". It's anchored to that start date and won't show up on the critical path that task won't move automatically anymore regardless of dependency connections, leveling, etc... You want to make sure all your tasks are set to start "As early as constraints allow" for it to be part of the critical path. If you have a task that has been set to start "On specified date" you can click on the "reset" button in the Task : Information inspector.

Does this help? If you're still seeing issues with the critical path in your project, you can email us your OmniPlan file to omniplan@omnigroup.com and we'll take a closer look.

[stephenrussett]

Ok most likely in this case then i have a few activities which are locked in dates. These dates cannot occur as early as possible. They have to be exact dates. Will the critical path not continue through the locked in date?

[stephenrussett]

Also what would be the gap of time that OP considers wiggle room?

would 1 day be wiggle room? Is there any way to change this?

Thanks

[skwirl]

Originally Posted by stephenrussett

Ok most likely in this case then i have a few activities which are locked in dates. These dates cannot occur as early as possible. They have to be exact dates. Will the critical path not continue through the locked in date?

The critical path will not continue thru a locked date because with the date being locked, nothing before the locked task can delay the locked task's start date. (Similar behavior to having a task set with a "on specified date" schedule).

Originally Posted by stephenrussett

Also what would be the gap of time that OP considers wiggle room?

1 second is considered wiggle room. In other words, there's zero slack time for critical path currently. We have a feature request to allow the slack time to be a user-definable setting which I'll add a vote for you.

[stephenrussett]

mmmmm we really need a way to see the critical path even with locked in dates. :(