Microsoft Project

Hi Anees

Thank you for your question.

You can connect projects in two ways. From the Project Tab choose
Sub Project and browse for the file to add to your current plan.

The downside of this approach is the resources aren't connect between the plans.

An alternative approach is to create a single document that contains all the resources for your projects - no tasks yet. Save it - this becomes your Resource Pool. Leave it open.

Now open the first of your sub projects
From the Resource Tab click Resource Pool and choose Share Resources

Set the dialogue to use resources from your Resource Pool file and click OK.
Your sub project will now allow you to assign resources that were originally in the Resource Pool.

Save both files.

Now when you open the sub project it will ask you to open a copy of the connected resource pool in the background (read only). It does this so that when you update your project, close and save MS Project will also quickly unlock your resource pool file and update it as well.

Use this method to connect other sub projects to the Resource Pool file.

It's worth noting that when you open the Resource Pool from now on it will check with you how you want the file to be accused. The default is Read Only - this is handy as it allows more than one person to connect to the Resource Pool without conflict.

If you need to add or remove resources from the Pool open the Resource Pool using option 2 - this lets you edit the Resource Pool but temporarily locks everyone out until you close the file.

Option 3 from the Resource Pool dialogue box is the same as two with the added bonus that it will create a combined plan of all the projects. This time though all the resources are from the Resource Pool so overallocation can be shown.

I hope this helps let me know if you have any questions.

Kind regards,
Andrew