Managing Projects › Autoschedule

Autoschedule

Autoschedule is an automated way for you to create project schedules. Autoschedule schedules tasks based on an internal set of rules that are set by the system. Each task is scheduled:

• To use availability as early in the project as possible
• To start at the earliest or latest possible time, subject to constraints
• To minimize the duration of the critical path

Autoschedule automatically schedules tasks based on task dependencies, constraints, priority order, and related date and resource logic. Autoscheduling allows you to model your plan and generate dates for your tasks and your overall project. Before publishing a schedule as a plan of record, you are able to see the results of scheduling and make any adjustments. By default, Autoschedule is designed to eliminate or minimize resource overallocation.

Autoschedule uses task duration and task date constraint and dependency information to identify the project's critical path—the best way to schedule project tasks while minimizing the delays and expansions that can cause deadline slippage, and at the same time, minimizing resource overallocation. The critical path determines the earliest finish date of the project.

Autoschedule uses critical path data to make the following scheduling adjustments:

• Determines early and late start and finish dates for each task.
• Moves the early start forward or back, as applicable.
• Checks for fixed loading patterns and adjusts early start and finish dates as needed to fit.
• Builds new ETC curves based on the recalculated early start and finish dates for the tasks and subtracts as applicable from remaining resource availability.
• In order to eliminate or minimize resource overallocation, autoschedule calculations may move out a task's finish date, or the project's finish date.

More information:

Display Schedules

Return to the Plan of Record Without Publishing

Define Autoschedule Parameters and Autoschedule

Check Autoschedule Progress

View Autoschedule Results

Cancel Autoscheduling

Projects Locks and Tentative Schedule Mode

Schedule Subnets

Create Tasks and Milestones