Can you do critical path in Autotask?

Not with a true, automated critical-path engine. Autotask lets you build a workplan with finish-to-start task dependencies, so you can sequence work — but it doesn't calculate the critical path (the chain of dependent tasks with zero slack that sets your finish date), flag what will slip your go-live, or auto-recast downstream dates when something moves. For real CPM, Autotask shops add a planner like Moovila or run a dedicated layer alongside.

Dependencies vs. critical path

It's a common mix-up. Drawing dependency arrows tells you the order of tasks. The critical-path method goes further: it finds the longest dependent sequence, calculates float on every other task, and tells you precisely which delays actually threaten the deadline. Autotask does the former, not the latter.

Your options

• Bolt-on planner: Moovila is the deepest CPM engine in MSP (RPAX risk scoring, automatic recast) and integrates with Autotask.
• Dedicated layer: run a modern project tool alongside Autotask that owns scheduling.
• Manual: track float in a spreadsheet — fragile, and stale the moment a date moves.

Current's native critical path

Current includes a real native critical-path engine with client-side cycle detection, an interactive dependency map, and PTO/availability-aware back-scheduling across the timeline, dependency map, and what-if scenarios. It runs alongside your PSA — Autotask, ConnectWise, or Halo PSA — which stays the billing source of truth, Current owns scheduling, and time still flows back for billing.

What a real critical-path calculation requires

Three things, and Autotask has the first only. You need a dependency graph richer than finish-to-start, because real delivery work overlaps: a configuration task that can start once its predecessor starts, a pair of tasks that must finish together, an offset expressed in working days. You need a forward pass computing the earliest each task can start and finish given every constraint, then a backward pass computing the latest each could run without moving the finish date. And you need the whole thing to recompute continuously, because a critical path calculated once and left alone is a picture of a plan that no longer exists.

Autotask supports finish-to-start relationships with no lead or lag offsets, and does not compute or continuously recast a critical path. That is why MSPs who need one bolt on a dedicated engine.

What zero slack actually tells you

A task on the critical path has no room to slip: a one-day delay there is a one-day delay on the whole project. Tasks off it have float, meaning they can move within a window without changing the finish date. This is the practical value of the calculation, because it tells your dispatcher which of forty in-flight tasks actually deserves attention this morning. Without it, everything looks equally urgent, so nothing is.

How Current's engine works

• All four dependency types, with lead and lag expressed in working days rather than raw calendar days.
• A forward and backward pass that identifies every zero-slack task, recomputed as dates change.
• Availability-aware placement, so a task assigned to someone on booked leave slides past it rather than landing on it.
• Cycle prevention before an impossible edge can be drawn, rather than an error afterwards.
• Back-scheduling from a fixed go-live date, which flags a deadline that would require starting in the past.
• A preview of every downstream date change before you apply it, so a drag on the timeline is never a surprise.

How this coexists with Autotask

Current runs alongside Autotask rather than replacing it. Autotask stays the system of record for time and billing; Current owns the scheduling. One boundary worth knowing up front: Current pushes the computed dates to Autotask, not the dependency graph. The sequencing model lives in Current and Autotask receives the resulting start and end dates, because Autotask has no field to hold the richer relationships. Current also reads Autotask's own predecessors, so if a pushed date does not stick it can tell you Autotask's scheduling recalculated it rather than failing silently.