Force a series of tasks to be scheduled back to back

I have a project with several tasks, mostly organized within task groups. There is one group of three tasks that I’d like to force to be scheduled back to back (eg, task 1 on Monday, task 2 on Tuesday, task 3 on Wednesday). The individual tasks are assigned to different staff members, who have other tasks assigned as well. I have assigned dependencies Task 1 --> Task 2 --> Task 3.

What is the best way to force scheduling back-to-back days?

Right now, I seem to have figured out that assigning “priority 1” to the three tasks, accomplishes what I want. Is this the best way to do it?

I don’t otherwise use priorities, so I’m not sure if it will affect the project in other ways.

I also feel there might be another way to accomplish what I want, but I’m not sure what it is.

I appreciate any guidance!


[UPDATE 1]

Well, the priority method doesn’t quite work.

I assigned a few more dependencies from other tasks to my priority tasks. This has the affect of separating my three priority tasks.

For example, I now have Task A --> Task 3, which bumps Task 3 by a day. The effect is a gap day between Task 2 and Task 3.

I feel I’m missing something obvious here…




[ UPDATE 2]

I have a small workaround. For the moment, I changed the dependencies to the entire group:

Task A --> Group 1: [Task 1–>Task 2–>Task 3]

This mostly gets it, even though the real dependency is Task A–>Task 3. Keep in mind Task A and Task 3 are assigned to different staff. So, really, Task A could be scheduled at the same time as Task 1 or 2, as long as it happens before Task 3.

That’s what I hoped to accomplish but, again, the way I set it up, breaks a day between Task 2 and Task 3.

@devynosborne I think the method you eventually settled on (setting task dependencies between each of the tasks) is really the only way to accomplish this in OmniPlan. If you combine these dependencies with setting the tasks as the highest priority in your project, OmniPlan should schedule each task to be completed as early as possible, which should help avoid scheduling breaks between these tasks.

If you have additional questions about creating your schedule, our Support team would be happy to help out! You can send them an anonymized copy of your file by selecting Help > Contact Omni… in the OmniPlan menu bar and selecting the option to include a copy of the file. This will create an email with a copy of your OmniPlan document, replacing all of the text in your document with “Xxxxx” strings.

Hi @ains - thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, OmniPlan doesn’t quite schedule the tasks the way I’m hoping. I’ll send in the file, which I’m sure will be easier than trying to explain it here. Thank you!