A student inquired how to create a critical task three-week look-ahead filter. Let’s take a look.
A critical task three-week look-ahead filter helps work planning by isolating the upcoming critical tasks. Creating this kind of filter in P6 Professional requires understanding matching criteria within a filter. For a primer on P6 Professional filter matching criteria, refer to the following article:
The upcoming critical task filter is useful for large projects because it highlights not only upcoming activities but also critical ones that cannot be delayed without impacting project completion.
This article demonstrates the creation and execution of a critical task, a three-week look-ahead filter in P6 Professional.
Demonstration
We have in Figure 1 our demonstration schedule.
This schedule has progressed one month. To best plan the next three-week work period, it would be helpful to isolate all critical tasks. In the layout tool group, we click the Filter By button, Figure 1. Then, in the Filters dialogue, we click + New, Figure 2.
We then create the critical task three-week look-ahead filter in Figure 3.
This filter consists of four different criteria joined by the ‘All the following’ matching criterion, ‘And’ conjunction. All four of these criteria must be met for the filter to capture the corresponding task. One of these criteria consists of two sub-criteria joined by the ‘Any of the following’ matching criterion. Using this set of criteria, the filter captures any task whose start or finish is less than 3 weeks from the current data date (DD). The DD is the current status date of the schedule.
Think of the DD like the closing date on your checking account statement. If your checking account statement closes on the thirteenth of each month. Then your statement will include all transactions on your account up to and including the thirteenth of each month. In the same way, the schedule update includes all progress that took place up to and including the DD.
For a primer on the DD and progressing the schedule, refer to the following:
The Figure 3 filter first excludes completed tasks, then level-of-effort (LOE) tasks. For a primer on the LOE task, refer to the following article.
After the LOE exclusion criterion, the next three lines form a single block of criteria. The first line provides the matching criterion, ‘Any of the following’. This is like putting the ‘Or’ conjunction between each following line in this block. The first of these lines captures a task if its start date is less than or equal to DD plus 3 weeks. The second, if its finish is less than or equal to the DD plus three weeks. If either of these two lines of criterion is true for a respective task, it is included in the output. The last line of the filter tests for tasks whose total float is equal to or less than zero, our test for critical tasks. Only critical tasks are included.
In Figure 4, we check mark the ‘3 Week Critical Look Ahead’ filter and click OK to activate it and exit the dialogue.
The output from this filter is displayed in Figure 5.
Summary
In the Filters dialogue, you can create a filter to include all in-progress or not-started critical tasks in the next three or other weeks.
The filter can consist of different criteria separated by the ‘And’ conjunction, ‘All the following’ matching criterion or the ‘Or’ conjunction, ‘Any of the following’ matching criterion. Each block can be separated by these ‘And’ or ‘Or’ conjunctions. You can also have sub-criteria making up blocks of criteria. With these filter tools, you can create complex filters to meet a wide range of schedule reporting requirements.