Waiting for the nested hierarchical tasks functionality in TFS 2010 is not currently an option for me right now in my quest to process tasks from MS Project 2007. Nor is manually updating each task title within Project to keep some sort of structure since that would be a real pain and be largely un-maintainable once you have more than a few tasks.

Now it’s been a long while since I last messed around with VBA, so this is probably pretty ugly – however it does do the trick. In addition to keeping the hierarchical naming structure, it also marks summary tasks as not publishable to avoid polluting TFS with them.

The entry point is HierarchicalTaskNames().

Dim TitleStack As Collection
Dim taskId As Integer

Sub RecursiveScanAndFix(ByRef t As Task)
    Dim child As Task
    Dim i As Integer
    Dim text As String

    text = t.Name

    ' If this task has children then add the name to the stack and continue on down
    If t.OutlineChildren.Count > 0 Then
        Push(text)
        t.Text25 = "No"
        ' Now look for the children

        For Each child In t.OutlineChildren
            RecursiveScanAndFix(child)
        Next child

        Pop()

    Else
        ' No, no children found. So these will be actual tasks. Therefore we need to prepend the hierarchy name onto the task
        ' First off look to see if we've already named this. If so we'll strip the previous hierarchical name off before we start
        If Left(text, 1) = "[" Then
            ' Yes we have. Hunt down the last ] and remove it from the text
            For i = Len(text) To 1 Step -1
                If Mid(text, i, 1) = "]" Then
                    text = Mid(text, i + 1)
                    Exit For
                End If
            Next
            text = Trim(text)
        End If

        ' Now add the hierarchical name to the task title

        t.Name = GetTitleFromStack & " " & text

        taskId = t.ID
    End If
End Sub

Sub HierarchicalTaskNames()
    Dim t As Task
    taskId = 1
    TitleStack = New Collection

    While taskId <= ActiveProject.NumberOfTasks
        t = ActiveProject.Tasks(taskId)
        If t.OutlineChildren.Count > 0 Then
            RecursiveScanAndFix(ActiveProject.Tasks(taskId))
        End If
        taskId = taskId + 1
    End While
End Sub

Function Pop() As String
    If TitleStack.Count > 0 Then
        Pop = TitleStack.Item(TitleStack.Count)
        TitleStack.Remove(TitleStack.Count)
    End If
End Function

Function Push(ByVal Title As String)
    TitleStack.Add(Title)
End Function

Function GetTitleFromStack() As String
    GetTitleFromStack = "[ "
    Dim i As Integer

    For i = 1 To TitleStack.Count
        GetTitleFromStack = GetTitleFromStack & TitleStack.Item(i)
        If i <> TitleStack.Count Then
            GetTitleFromStack = GetTitleFromStack & " | "
        End If
    Next

    GetTitleFromStack = GetTitleFromStack & " ]"
End Function

MS Project 2007 SP1