Ron,

this is a bit tough to answer. This holds true for 3.x to 4.0.4, as far as I can tell.

In general the Formal Project Management uses the schedule dependencies, the dependency links and the owner to calculate the schedule. If items have no link and are assigned to an owner and get a duration, the items are scheduled in the order they qualify to be scheduled (as son as the required data is available).

Using the priority does not change that order in any way. There are requests to be able to rank or prioritize that and regenerate a schedule from that.

What RTC allows to do is, in the my work view of the user, you can change the order of when tasks are supposed to be started. This is then reflected in the plan.

You can drag and drop the bars in a roadmap/gantt chart to reorder them too. However, I have tried to play around with it and the effects are a bit confusing and I am not completely sure how it is intended to be used. It is also quite dedious work. If you do that, the changes in the order should be reflected in the my work view of the user.

I think there is some work in the pipeline to provide a mywork view in the Web UI.

In general, the planning components of RTC, today, are better suited for bottom up planning (as in agile) than for top down planning. That is how RTC was intended in the beginning. I would suggest to enter enhancement requests if you see the need for other scenarios, to give development a clear picture of the desires.