Terms and Concepts

Each individual work items that together form individual units of work that compose a project are called Tasks . Tasks are created to break the project work down into smaller pieces. A typical task will have a name, a start and end date/time, and duration. Tasks are hierarchical in nature; a task can contain sub-tasks.

A project can be used to logically organize tasks. The project’s StartDate is used as a reference date by all tasks associated with that project.

A task that contains child tasks is referred to as a summary task. A summary task is depicted as a summary bar in the chart user interface of the GanttView control. The start and end times for a summary task are read-only, as its start and end times depend upon its sub-tasks.

A Milestone is a reference point that marks a major event in a project and is used to monitor the project’s progress. Any task with zero duration is automatically displayed as a milestone. You can also mark any other task of any duration as a milestone.

Each task can have a Deadline assigned, which will appear as a symbol on the task.

A task can be linked to another task, in such a way as to make the completion of one task dependent on the beginning or completion of another task. A task whose completion is contingent on the status of another task is said to have a dependency .

When a start or finish date is set for a task in a Project, it means that the task should not start or finish any earlier than that date. Constraints can be applied to tasks to impose restrictions on the way that the task’s start and finish dates are calculated.