How To Create A Parent Task In Schedule View:
First lets go over how to create a parent task in the schedule view of your project. Select the task underneath the one you want to be made the parent task.
Then go to the two arrows facing opposite ways in the top horizontal toolbar.
Click on the arrow pointing right.
And you will see the task above the one you’ve selected turn bold, marking it as a parent or summary task.
You will also see your new parent task marked on the gantt chart as being black and when you hover over it it will tell you this task is a summary/parent task.
Creating a Parent Task in Board View (AKA Creating a Rollup):
Explanation:
The way parent tasks are shown in board view is a bit different because they are actually not shown at all; they are shown as what we refer to as rollups, which is very similar to a parent but slightly different. It makes more sense in relation to the boards and tags view gantterAi has adapted.
A summary or parent task is calculated through all of its respective child tasks durations as a weighted average. While a rollup is calculated by its children as well as by today's date or earned value.
On a parent task dates will also adjust based on the children while with a rollup you have to set dates and things don’t adjust sometimes based on children. Sometimes they do depending on the way the dates were set by the project manager.
Therefore dates on rollups are more concrete. For example even if all the children tasks are completed if you have time left based on the dates you set the rollup will still not be marked as complete. A true parent task on the other hand would be, which you can create on the regular schedule side of gantterAi.
However once the date is in the past a rollup and summary is the same cause you can’t add additional work.
How To Create a Rollup:
Click on the desired tag you’d like to have a rollup and you’ll see a dropdown where you can add or select a rollup for the tag you have selected. Then hit save task and you will see the rollup reflected when you click back into the tag.