Converting Task Types

ALICE does not currently support changing task types within the Plan page. However, a user can follow this process using the task data export to convert a task to a different task type.

The following task types are supported by ALICE:

  • Regular Tasks
  • Milestones
  • Level of Effort

 

Step By Step:

  1. From the Plan page, download the task-data-export excel file. 
  2. In the Tasks tab,
    1. Filter for the desired tasks / milestones / level of efforts that are to be converted to another task type
    2. Copy the entire rows and paste at the end of the dataset

In this example we are converting “Early Delivery” tasks into milestones.

    1. Make the follow edits to these columns:
      1. Under “Id*”, add a suffix such as “_MS” (or “_T” / “_LOE”) to the copied rows to differentiate them from the originals
      2. Under “Type*”, change the fields of the copied rows to the desired task type
        1. REGULAR → this is a normal task
        2. START_MILESTONE
        3. FINISH_MILESTONE
        4. LEVEL_OF_EFFORT
      3. Under “Source*”, change the fields of the copied rows to “MANUAL”
      4. Under “External ID - read only”, delete the fields
      5. If converting tasks or level of efforts to milestones, under “Duration equation”, change the number format of the fields to Text and set equal to 0.0
  1. In the Task Relationships tab,
    1. Like in step 1.a., filter for the desired tasks to be converted in the “From Task Id*” column (helpful to use Vlookup here and a couple columns to apply the suffix to the task ids)

Filtering for predecessor relationships containing the desired tasks to be converted.

    1. Add the same suffix that was added to the task ids in step 1.c.i.
    2. Repeat this step in the “To Task Id*” column
  1. Back in the Tasks tab, delete the original row of tasks that are being converted.
    1. Also,  don’t forget to delete any columns that may have been added along the way to help filter the data. ALICE requires the task-data-export file to be in the same structure as it was downloaded in when uploaded.

5. Upload the updated task-data-export file

Before

After

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