Key Points

• If you have resource information duplicated in more than one project plan, a resource pool is an excellent way to collect resource information across project plans and spot problems, such as resource overallocation.

• Besides indicating individual resources’ nonworking time in a resource pool, you can edit the project calendar in a resource pool (for example, marking holidays as nonworking time) and that information will be propagated to all sharer plans of the resource pool file.

• Resource assignment details from all sharer plans are available for viewing (but not editing) in the resource pool file.

• Consolidating project plans into a single plan is useful when you want to see all of the aggregate details in one place (the consolidated project plan), yet continue to work with the individual project plans.

• When a task in one project plan has a logical dependency on a task in another project plan, you can link the two with a cross-project link. This produces what is sometimes called a ghost task (the predecessor or successor task) in both project plans.