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Not Able to Exclude All Parent Tasks in Report

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Level 1
I am building a Report to display Children Tasks expected to start during the next month. The Number of Children is set to 0 in order to exclude Parent Tasks. The Report works in general, but some Parent Tasks are not excluded. The behavior does not appear consistent; with some Projects showing no Parent Tasks and other Projects showing selected Parent Tasks. I am not able to see an obvious pattern. Does anyone have experience with this behavior or suggestions on how to make the Parent Task exclusion more robust? My Filter Text is below. Thanks! status=CPL status_Mod=notin numberOfChildren=0 numberOfChildren_Mod=eq projectedStartDate=$$TODAY projectedStartDate_Mod=between projectedStartDate_Range=$$TODAY+1m Tim Abrott SMWE
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4 Replies

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Level 8
Dear Tim, It's a bit difficult without access to your data, but is it possible some parent tasks are at the top level but don't actually have any child tasks? It's not uncommon to take this approach to put some structure into a plan and make it a little more readable. If that is the case, you can also filter on indent level. Modifying your filter to include the top two lines would exclude tasks without an indent as well: indent=0 indent_Mod=ne status=CPL status_Mod=notin numberOfChildren=0 numberOfChildren_Mod=eq projectedStartDate=$$TODAY projectedStartDate_Mod=between projectedStartDate_Range=$$TODAY+1m Barry Buchanan Work Management Australia

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Level 1
Hi Barry; Thanks for your reply and suggestions. I looked at the report filter behavior more closely and found an error on my part. My filter included the text in my original post, but also included an OR filter "appended" at the end. I thought the filtering would occur in sequence, with the final OR filter applied last. Parent tasks were slipping through the filter because they were not specifically excluded from the second part of the OR filter. Instead, I need to create two parallel sets of AND filters connected by the OR. My solution is below. Hopefully this example will help others avoid this report filter design error. Cheers. status=CPL status_Mod=notin numberOfChildren=0 numberOfChildren_Mod=eq plannedStartDate=$$TODAY+1m plannedStartDate_Mod=lte OR:1:status=CPL OR:1:status_Mod=notin OR:1:numberOfChildren=0 OR:1:numberOfChildren_Mod=eq OR:1:projectedStartDate=$$TODAY+1m OR:1:projectedStartDate_Mod=lte Tim Abrott SMWE

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Level 3
I typically do this by keeping the parent tasks assignments blank and then filter the report to exclude parent tasks that the assignment is blank. Jeannie Hart Cambia Health Solutions, Inc

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Level 6
Hi Jeannie, Try using 'Number of Children' equal to 0 as a filter in a task report Catherine Hayes The Channel Company