Enforce predecessors

Last update: June 12, 2024

Topics:
Work Management

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Predecessors are tasks on which other tasks are dependent for completion. Predecessor relationships affect the Start and Completion Dates of the tasks and ultimately impact the timeline of the project.

For information about predecessors, see Overview of task predecessors.

By setting predecessor relationships between tasks, you define how the start or finish of a dependent task depends upon the start or finish of their predecessor tasks. This is done by using different Dependency Types.

For information about Dependency Types, see Overview of task dependency types.

Overview of enforced predecessors

IMPORTANT

You must enforce predecessors to require that predecessor relationships are respected. Without enforcing the predecessors, dependent tasks can start and finish independently from the start and finish of their predecessors, regardless of their Dependency Types.

You can enforce the predecessor relationship when setting predecessors on a project.

If a predecessor is enforced, the successor task cannot start before the predecessor completes. For example, enforcing a Finish-Start relationship between Task A and Task B means that Task B cannot start (the Status must remain New, and the Percent Complete must remain 0%) until Task A is marked as completed. Enforcing relationships apply to all predecessor types.

Access requirements

Expand to view access requirements for the functionality in this article.

You must have the following access to perform the steps in this article:

Adobe Workfront plan	Any
Adobe Workfront license	New: Standard OR Current: Plan
Access level configurations	Edit access to Tasks and Projects
Object permissions	Manage permissions to the tasks and the project

For more detail about the information in this table, see Access requirements in Workfront documentation.

Enforce a predecessor at the task level

Go to the successor task whose predecessor you want to enforce.
Click Predecessors in the left panel, then click Add Predecessor. You might need to click Show More, then Predecessors.
(Conditional) If you want to add a cross-project predecessor, remove the name of the project in the Parent Project field and replace it with another project.
Specify the name of the predecessor task or tasks in the Tasks field.
Specify the Dependency Type between these two tasks.

The default Dependency Type is Finish-Start.
Select the Enforced field to enforce the predecessor.
Click Save.

Enforce a predecessor in a task list

Go to a task list on a project.
From the View drop-down menu, select the Standard View.
Make a mental note of the number of task which you are going to designate as the predecessor.
Find the successor task whose predecessor you want to enforce.
In the Predecessors column, start entering the number of the predecessor task followed by “e”. For example, type “1e” to add task number 1 as a predecessor to the selected task.
Click Enter to save your predecessor information for the task.

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