Actual Hours from PWA do not trigger a schedule recalc in MS Proje

[PM Training 12]

With several projects (not all), when resources enter their actual hours in
PWA, and the PM accepts time, we see the following symptoms:

1. The WORK does not change to match the actual hours entered for that task
for that day.
2. The WORK to be done is not pushed ahead.

For example, if a task has 8 hours of work for Monday, and the Resource
enters 4 hours for Monday, after the time is accepted, the WORK stays at 8
hours, and the work to be done is not pushed ahead.
Yet, if the PM overtypes the actual work, MS Project will change the WORK
and move the work-to--done ahead (which we think is normal behavior) When
the actual work comes through PWA, MS Project does not seem to recalculuate.
We created several simple test projects, and the PWA path works fine for the
simple test projects.
We are running SP2a.

Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

PMTraining12:

Are you getting training or giving?<g> I think you have one minor issue and
one misunderstanding. If you're expecting the value of the field "work" to
change when entering 4 hours against 8 planned, then you're misunderstanding
the calculation. After accepting the update work (aka planned work) will
remain 8 hours, "actual work" should equal 4. When your actual work exceeds
8 hours, then you'll see the work value change to equal the actual work
posted. Remember that we're talking about planned work. The system updates
the work value once actual work exceeds planned work, because if you spent
12 hours on a task, you can't still be planning on finishing in 8. Make
sense? If you've saved a baseline, baseline work remains unchanged.

As for your statusing problem, have all you project managers go to Tools >
Options and on the Calculation tab:

Check the box "Updating task status updated resource status"
Check the box "Move start of remaining parts before status date forward to
status date"
Click the Set as Default button at the bottom of the dialog

Note: This change will affect statusing going forward only. You'll need to
manually correct any inconsistencies created prior to the change.

 

[Jinesh Dalal]

I'm looking for help on something similar issue.

Say for example, resource is assigned to work on Task A & task A is
scheduled to get completed by some date in past - say for example 1st July.
But due to some hidden priority (which is not originally defined in the plan,
like resource is assigned some urgent work on some other project), resource
is not working on task A. But when we open the project having task A, it
still shows the Finish Date as 1st July, which is incorrect.

Putting the same problem with another example, say resource is assigned to
work on Task A and B simultaneously at 50% allocation for 5 days, but
somehow, after 2 days, he was not able to work on Task B, but the project
will show both the tasks getting completed on the same day, which is also
incorrect.

Thus, project calculates or updates schedule only if the resource enters the
work in the timesheet and PM approves it. Is there any way to make project
calculate & update the schedule automatically to give the status as on date?

As always, I'm sure that i'll get the perfact answer this time also. Thanks.
--
Regards

Jinesh Dalal

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Jinesh:

As you've discovered, only tasks that are reported on, get rescheduled when
using the Updates page in Project Web Access. The system can't possibly act
on other tasks as it requires input to do so. So, we still need to be good
project managers and update our plan to reschedule incomplete work that in
now sitting in the past. The best way to do this is use the basic tools
provided in the Project Client, Tools > Tracking. From here the your choice
of options and methods is dependent on your system configuration, task
configurations and scheduling standards.