Changing Actual Start Date

[RQ]

PS2007 - SP1

What determines whether or not changing the Actual Start date in My Tasks
results in the Start Date changing in the Project Plan? We have tested
several sceanarios with Fixed Unit tasks - sometimes if we change the Actual
Start date in My Tasks and approve the changes - the Start Date changes in
the project plan. Other times it does not.

This has happened inconsistently when making a task a percent complete less
then 100. There seems to be some way the system is determining whether or
not to apply the update to the project plan but we cannot figure out what it
is.

One simple scenario is we have a 4 lineproject plan, each task is 30 days in
duration, no predecessors, Fixed Units, Project Start date is one day prior
to current date - mark a task 1% complete in My Tasks - change the Actual
Start date to current date - after update is approved the Start Date in the
project plan is still the original Start Date.

The same exact scenario was done in another project plan and the Start Date
Was updated.

RQ

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

RQ --

Your process is the source of the problem. You need to require your users
to enter the Actual Start date first, following by their estimated % Work
Complete. When you enter the % Work Complete value first, the software
assumes the task started as currently scheduled, which defeats your purpose
in using the Actual Start date. Hope this helps.

 

[RQ]

Dale,

Thanks - we will run some tests - thanks for clearing up our confusion

RQ