Dependency Types in Task Templates

In the Gantt view, shotgrid lets you set up different dependency types (finish-to-start, start-to-finish, start-to-start, finish-to-finish). I would like to be able to

  1. set up those dependencies in a task template, so that the specific dependencies are created each time the task template is applied to a shot.

  2. see (and query) in the upstream dependency fields, specific types of dependency relationships. For example, I would love to be able to query something like "show me all tasks, with a finish-to-finish relationship to this task, where the status is not done or omit).

  1. Pretty sure you can do this in a Task Template. Have you tried?
  2. You can certainly see the Up/Down dependencies in the “Upstream Dependency” and “Downstream Dependency” fields (bottom of the Fields list), but likely not the dependency type.

Yes, I can link upstream/downstream dependencies in the task template, but what I want to do is to be able to specifiy (within the task template linking structure), what kind of upstream or downstream dependencies they are (finish to start, start to start, etc). Right now, the only way to do that is to draw those links in the gantt view. I guess I could then make a task template from that set of links, but then every time I needed to change the dependency structure, I’d have to re-do the gantt and (overwrite?) the template (not even sure if this is possible). But even if it is, I’d prefer to edit in the template.

Unless I’m misunderstanding your process, you can specify the dependency type in the Task Template same as you would in an Asset.
In the Task Template, select 2 or more Tasks, and right-click then in the Dependencies section you can specify what flavor you want:

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Ooooh! Nice. Yes, that will work! Thank you.

Now Shotgrid just needs to give me a way to query those links by dependency type. I think the dev team could access the info via the A.P.I. But I’m looking for a solution that could be implemented by production when designing pages for leads. For example: show me the current status of all of the tasks working in parallel to this task (start-to start). Or: show me the any tasks with a finish-to-start relationship that are linked to this task and that are not “omit” or “done”. This effectively gives me a list of upstream blockers.

I’m adding onto this thread because I was able to use the advice from @schicky and set up specific dependency types in the task template (finish to start, start to start, etc.). But I am wondering-- when looking at dependencies in either the upstream dependency field or the downstream dependency field, how does production know what type of dependency they are looking at? Those fields just give a list of upstream/downstream dependencies, but there’s no way to identify the dependency type (and thus, no easy way to audit them). Yes, we can visually see dependency types with the arrows on a gantt chart, but there’s no gantt chart for task templates (which is where we, in production, audit our dependency interactions and make master changes to the task relationships). I’ve checked to see if I could make a query field that would break out task dependency relationships by type, but that does not seem to be an option. Does anyone have any ideas?

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@pen

If you’re using the Python or REST API, you can access the task dependencies programmatically. Details here: Task Dependencies — python-api v3.4.1 documentation