Copying and Pasting Elements from One Process Document to Another

DPM Process and Resource Definition allows for existing activities to be copied from one process document and pasted into another, and provides a number of options for doing so.

Using the default behavior, only the activities themselves are copied:  any items or resources assigned to the copied activities are not copied into the other process document. All defined attributes of the copied activities are also present when pasted into another process document. 

The following sections describe both:
  • To perform the following tasks, both the source and destination process documents must be open and visible to the user.
      
  • It is often considered easier to have the source and destination windows tiled vertically in V5. This is achieved by selecting the Window> Tile Vertically menu command when the two process documents are open.
     

Copying activities without associated data (default)

1.

 Select as many activities as desired in the source process document to copy. Hold down the CTRL key to select multiple activities to copy:


 

2.

Copy the selected activities by either:

  • Pressing CTRL+C, or
  • Selecting the Edit > Copy menu command, or
  • Right-clicking on one of the selected activities and selecting Copy from the context menu
     

3.

Right-click on the Process node of the destination process document and select Paste from the context menu. The copied activities will appear in the PPR tree of the destination document:

Copying activities with associated data
1. Select as many activities as desired in the source process document to copy. Hold down the CTRL key to select multiple activities:

2.

Copy the selected activites by either:

  • Pressing CTRL+C, or
  • Selecting the Edit> Copy menu command, or
  • Right-clicking on one of the selected activities and selecting Copy from the context menu
     
3. Right-click on the Process node of the destination process document and select Paste Special from the context menu: 


A Paste Special dialog box is displayed which presents a number of different pasting options:

4.

Select the type of paste to be performed, where:

  • Simple paste will paste only the copied activities. It does not copy any links associated with Items and/or Resources.

  • Paste with Items, Paste with Resources and Paste with Items and Resources are used to copy the activities as well as links to Items and/or Resources. This command succeeds only if the entire hierarchy of the Items and/or Resources to be linked exists in the destination document. Otherwise, the paste is not performed (including any pasting of activities) and a message is displayed indicating the reason why the paste could not be performed.

    Note that if the destination document contains the Item/Resource to be linked, but it is located under a different hierarchy (compared to the hierarchy in the source document), it is considered a different item and the paste will not be performed.

  • Paste with Items and entire hierarchy, Paste with Resources and entire hierarchy and Paste with Items and Resources and entire hierarchy are used to copy the activities as well as insert the linked Items and/or Resources (with their associated hierarchies) into the destination document if they are not already present, and also links the activities to those Items and/or Resources. However, the following entities are not copied:

    • Assigned MA

    • 3D states assigned as Begin Condition and End Condition

    • 3D Context

    • Positions

After selecting the desired paste option, click OK to paste the activities into the destination process document.