List of considerations and best practice methods for working with master projects and subprojects in Project 2002 (325958)

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The concept of master projects and subprojects is important in Microsoft Project 2000 and earlier because this is the best way to organize, work with, and track the progress of multiple projects in these versions.

In Microsoft Project Server 2002, the need for master projects is reduced. Resource management across multiple projects is simplified by the use of a single global resource pool, and the relationships between projects can be managed by using enterprise outline codes and custom fields.

However, if you want to use master projects in Microsoft Project 2002, there are a few things that you must consider.

Considerations and Best Practice Methods

• Store each individual project in Microsoft Project Server.
  
  Each subproject file must be stored in the database so that you can view the summary task for each subproject and access the project view. If you publish only the master project file, the only tasks that are displayed in a project view for the master project file are those tasks in the master project file.
  
  For example, a master project file contains the following:

  Task A
  Task B
  Subproject Project1

  When you expand the outline for Project1, you see that it contains 200 tasks. When you view the master project in Microsoft Project Web Access, Task A, Task B, and the summary task that represents the Project1 subproject are displayed. The 200 tasks of Project1 are not displayed.
• After you import the master project in Microsoft Project Professional, update the local path to the subproject manually.
  
  To take full advantage of the enterprise features of Microsoft Project Server and Microsoft Project Professional, all project files must reside in the Microsoft Project Server database. This means that you must import and publish existing files to Microsoft Project Server. When you import a master project, the subproject links are not automatically updated. You must open the master project and update the links to use the correct location to the subproject plans. This makes sure that the correct subproject file is updated when new information is added to the subproject from within the master file.
  
  As a best practice method, first import all subproject files, and then do one of the following:
  • Open the master project, remove the previous link to the subproject file, and then specify the correct link to the newly imported file.
    
    -or-
  • Add the subproject field to your master file, and then edit the path to the subproject.
• Create a custom field to track the relationship between master project files and subproject files in Microsoft Project Web Access.
  
  In Microsoft Project Web Access, there are no indicators or fields to distinguish whether a project is a master project or a subproject file. To identify a project as a master, a subproject, or a standalone project, create a custom Enterprise Project Text field or Enterprise Project Flag field. You can use this field to group, filter, or create new views to organize and view master files and subproject files.