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How To: Use External Projects

From a schedule in Microsoft Project you can work with data from other project files in three ways: Subprojects, External Predecessors, and Resource Pools.

Subprojects

Microsoft Project allows you to manage larger projects by breaking them down into Subprojects. From one MPP file, a link can be added to another MPP file forming a parent-child relationship. The child MPP file will appear as a summary task in the location you've selected within the parent file. When this summary task is expanded the tasks from the child MPP file will appear seamlessly as tasks in the parent file.

Identifying Subproject Tasks

If you use MPXJ to read an MPP file that contains a Subproject, initially you won't see anything different to a file which just contains ordinary tasks: the Subproject will just appear as a normal summary task whose attributes will roll up the details from the Subproject. If you want you can just work with the task as-is, you only need to so something different if you want to work with the contents of the Subproject.

import net.sf.mpxj.ProjectFile;
import net.sf.mpxj.Task;
import net.sf.mpxj.reader.UniversalProjectReader;

...

ProjectFile file = new UniversalProjectReader().read("sample.mpp");
for (Task task : file.getTasks())
{
    if (task.getExternalProject())
    {
        System.out.println(task.getName() + " is a subproject");
        System.out.println("Path to the file is: " +
            task.getSubprojectFile());
        System.out.println("GUID of this project is: " +
            task.getSubprojectGUID());
        System.out.println("Offset used when displaying Unique ID values is: " +
            task.getSubprojectTasksUniqueIDOffset());
    }
}

The example above illustrates how we can identify a Subproject by using a task's External Project attribute. Once we have identified that we have a Subproject we can determine where the file is located, using the Subproject File attribute, and the GUID of this project, using the Subproject GUID attribute.

The last attribute we're looking at in this example is the Subproject Tasks Unique ID Offset. When Microsoft Project provides a combined view of two or more MPP files using Subprojects, one issue is that the Unique ID values in each project will no longer be unique. To get around this problem Microsoft Project adds an offset to the Unique ID values of the tasks it displays from each Subproject to ensure that each one has a distinct value. This offset is the value we're retrieving using the getSubprojectTasksUniqueIDOffset method.

Reading Subproject Data

If you wish, you can use UniversalProjectReader directly to load the external project, as the example below illustrates:

ProjectFile file = new UniversalProjectReader().read("sample.mpp");
Task externalProjectTask = file.getTaskByID(Integer.valueOf(1));
String filePath = externalProjectTask.getSubprojectFile();
ProjectFile externalProjectFile = new UniversalProjectReader().read(filePath);

The code above assumes that the file is located on a readable filesystem at the exact path specified by the Subproject File attribute.

Note that these examples assume that the file is on a filesystem which is directly readable. For MPP files exported from Project Server, it is likely that the path to an external project will be in the form <>\FileName which represents a project hosted by Project Server. MPXJ cannot open this type of external project.

An alternative to writing your own code to do this would be to use the method provided by MPXJ, as illustrated below:

ProjectFile file = new UniversalProjectReader().read("sample.mpp");
Task externalProjectTask = file.getTaskByID(Integer.valueOf(1));
ProjectFile externalProjectFile = externalProjectTask.getSubprojectObject();

The advantage of this approach, apart from using less code, is that MPXJ will attempt to find the file in locations other than the full path provided in Subproject File. By default the other place MPXJ will look is in the working directory of the current process, however this behaviour can be configured as the example below illustrates:

ProjectFile file = new UniversalProjectReader().read("sample.mpp");
file.getProjectConfig().setSubprojectWorkingDirectory(new File("/path/to/dir"));
Task externalProjectTask = file.getTaskByID(Integer.valueOf(1));
ProjectFile externalProjectFile = externalProjectTask.getSubprojectObject();

In the code above we're calling the setSubprojectWorkingDirectory method to give MPXJ details of a directory to look in when attempting to read an external project.

Note that if MPXJ can't load the external project for any reason, the getSubprojectObject method will return null.

Expanding Subproject Data

In Microsoft Project, when a Subproject task is expanded it behaves just like any other summary task by revealing the child tasks it contains. We can reproduce this behavior using the code shown in the sample below:

ProjectFile file = new UniversalProjectReader().read("sample.mpp");
Task externalProjectTask = file.getTaskByID(Integer.valueOf(1));
System.out.println("Has child tasks? " + externalProjectTask.hasChildTasks());
externalProjectTask.expandSubproject();
System.out.println("Has child tasks? " + externalProjectTask.hasChildTasks());

The expandSubproject method attempts to open the external project, and if successful attaches the tasks from the external project as children of the external project task. You are then able to access the tasks from the parent project along with the tasks from the external project as part of the same MPXJ ProjectFile instance.

Note that when using the expandSubproject method, the setSubprojectWorkingDirectory method on ProjectConfig can be used to tell MPXJ where to find the external projects in the same way we did when using the getSubprojectObject method.

You can also do this globally and expand all Subproject tasks in a project by using the expandSubprojects method on the project file itself:

ProjectFile file = new UniversalProjectReader().read("sample.mpp");
file.expandSubprojects(false);

Remember that all the "expand subproject" functionality described in the notes above is doing is attaching the tasks from one ProjectFile instance as child tasks of a task in another ProjectFile instance. This will allow you to recursively descend through the tasks in a project and any subprojects. However, these tasks still belong to separate ProjectFile instances, so calling the getTasks() method on the top level ProjectFile instance will only return the tasks from that project, and will not include tasks from any subprojects.

External Predecessors

The second way an external project can be referenced in a Microsoft Project schedule is through the use of an external predecessor task. Project allows you to enter the task ID for a predecessor in the form myproject.mpp\123 which selects the task with ID 123 in myproject.mpp as the predecessor of the task in the schedule you are working on.

When you use an external predecessor task like this, Project includes a "placeholder" task in your current schedule which represents the task in the external project and has a copy of all of the relevant attributes of the task from the external project. In many cases this placeholder task is all you need to work with the schedule.

When you are working with MPXJ, how can you identify that you are looking at a placeholder task representing an external predecessor? The sample code below illustrates this:

ProjectFile file = new UniversalProjectReader().read("sample.mpp");
for (Task task : file.getTasks())
{
    if (task.getExternalTask())
    {
        System.out.println(task.getName() + " is an external predecessor");
        System.out.println("The path to the file containing this task is: "
            + task.getSubprojectFile());
        System.out.println("The ID of the task in this file is: "
            + task.getSubprojectTaskID());
        System.out.println("The Unique ID of the task in this file is: "
            + task.getSubprojectTaskUniqueID());
    }
}

As the code above illustrates, if the getExternalTask method return true, the task is an external predecessor. As illustrated by the code there are three relevant attributes: Subproject File (the location of the external project this predecessor belongs to), and the Subproject Task ID and Subproject Task Unique ID which are the ID and Unique ID of the task in the schedule it comes from.

As with a task representing an external project, you can retrieve the project for an external predecessor task using the getSubprojectObject method. Note however that the expandSubproject method will have no effect as the external predecessor task does not represent an entire project!

Predecessors and Successors from Subprojects

As we saw in a previous section, when working with Microsoft Project you can configure a project with a number of subprojects. When this is the case you can also create predecessor or successor relationships between tasks in any of these projects. When you open your MPP file in Microsoft Project, and all of the subprojects can also be opened, then Microsoft Project will present you with a unified view of the tasks and their relationships, even though the relationships cross different files. However, if you open your project but do not have the subproject files available, you will see placeholder external tasks representing the predecessor or successor tasks from the missing subproject files.

When reading the file using MPXJ, you will encounter the same situation: opening your MPP file without any of the subprojects being available you will see placeholder external tasks for predecessor and successor tasks from the subproject files. As we have already seen, the expandSubprojects method can be used to expand all subprojects, if the files they represent are available, allowing you to traverse the hierarchy of tasks. The expandSubprojects method also offers some additional functionality: when you pass true to this method, MPXJ will attempt to replace any predecessor or successor relationships which include placeholder external tasks with relationships which refer to the original task from a subproject, and those placeholder external tasks will be removed from the project entirely. This functionality is intended to replicate what you would see if you opened your file in Microsoft Project and all subprojects were successfully loaded.

As noted previously, the expandSubprojects method is only stitching together a set of individual ProjectFile instances so the tasks they contain can be traversed seamlessly, and in this case the predecessor and successor relationships between those tasks no longer use placeholder external tasks. This is still not a single unified ProjectFile instance so care should be taken when working with this data to bear in mind that it comes from a number of separate files.

Resource Pools

The final way an external project can be used from a Microsoft Project schedule is as a resource pool. A resource pool schedule allows you to capture details of all of your organisation's resources in one place, then refer to them from multiple schedules. Setting up a resource pool like this should ensure that your resource utilisation across different projects is accurately captured as the utilisation detail in the resource pool is updated by the projects using those resources.

The full path for a project's resource pool can be retrieved using the getResourcePoolFile method as illustrated below:

ProjectFile file = new UniversalProjectReader().read("sample.mpp");
String path = file.getProjectProperties().getResourcePoolFile();

In a similar manner to the other external project examples given in previous sections, MPXJ can also open and read the resource pool file for you:

ProjectFile file = new UniversalProjectReader().read("sample.mpp");
ProjectFile resourcePool = file.getProjectProperties().getResourcePoolObject();

MSPDI Files

Much of the detail noted above is also applicable to MSPDI files, but with the following exceptions:

  • Where the MSPDI file contains a Subproject, only the Subproject File attribute will be populated, the Subproject GUID add Subproject Tasks Unique ID Offset will not be available.
  • If an MSPDI file has been saved in Microsoft Project from an MPP file which contains Subprojects, and those Subprojects were expanded at the point the file was exported, the MSPDI file will actually contain the data for the Subproject as well as the main project. MPXJ will automatically read this data, which you can access using the getSubprojectObject method on the task, or you can call the expandSubproject or expandSubprojects methods documented in the previous sections to show the tasks contained in the Subproject as part of the main project.
  • Where the original MPP file contained an external task predecessor, the equivalent MSPDI file will not contain a placeholder task for the predecessor. MPXJ will generate one for you, but this will contain none of the attributes you would find if you read the MPP file using MPXJ.
  • MSPDI files do not contain any references to resource pools.

Note that although Microsoft Project will write external predecessor information to an MSPDI file, it will fail to load these correctly when the MSPDI file is reopened.