Summary Tasks

If a task has child tasks, then it is called a summary task. Many attributes of summary tasks are rolled up from its child tasks. Some of the non trivial attributes are described below.

Start Date (planned/actual/projected)
It is the minimum of planned/actual/projected start date of its children.

Finish Date (planned/actual/projected)
It is the maximum of planned/actual/projected finish date of its children

Work (Effort)
It is the sum of work of its children.

Constraints
Constraints are not applicable for summary tasks.

Resource allocation
Resources assigned to a summary task will not be factored into the planned cost of the summary task, nor displayed on the resource load charts.

To avoid confusion, we highly recommend that you do not assign resources to summary tasks.

% Complete

% Complete = (W₁×P₁ + W₂×P₂ + ... + W_n×P_n) ÷ (W₁ + W₂ + ... + W_n)

For all n leaf-level descendants where W_i is the work and P_i is the % complete of its i^th descendant.

Predecessors
If a summary task has a predecessor, the system considers it to be equivalent to having that predecessor for all its children.

Auto/Manual Scheduling
Since the planned start and finish are calculated from its children, summary tasks are always considered to be auto scheduled.

Budget/Costs/Billing
It is the sum of the budget/costs/billing of its children.

Duration
It is the working time between the task's start and finish date as per the project's work calendar

Predecessors