Changing Duration

[Steve Lundwall]

(I'm going to show my newbie status in spades!) Very slowly I am slowing
setting up a project for some software development. I have detailed the
Research and Planning tasks fairly well, assigned resources from the
Enterprise Resource Pool and established dependencies. I have refrained from
setting constraints except on a couple of things. For example, we had a 3
hour meeting at a specific time on one day this week that four of my
resources were involved with. So I set it up to start on a specific day at a
specific time and with a 3H duration and then assign all four resources with
100% Units and it showed 3H for each in the Task Form. It was subsequently
Published. When the first of these resources reported actuals against it in
PWA (3 hours) and sent the update it updated the Project on the Server but
it changed the duration to 8H. It actually did the same thing for a 2H
meeting that only two resources were assigned to. It also changed it to 8H.

Our Global Calendar is set for a 7.5H working day by default so I don't
think it is simply defaulting to a full day. Is this because I didn't save a
baseline prior to reporting actuals against it? Any ideas why it is changing
this 3 hour meeting to 8 hours? Thanks.

Steve

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Steve --

What is your default method of tracking in Project Server? Click Admin -
Customize Project Web Access to find out. Let us know.

 

[Steve Lundwall]

The default method is Hours of work done per day.

I also want to clarify that it changed the duration of the task not of what
the person reported. It still shows them having reported 3h. Thanks.

Steve

 

[Steve Lundwall]

And interestingly enough - I changed the date format to show the time as
well as the date. It shows the 8h that it changed the Task to as 8:00 AM to
5:00 PM. I set our Standard Resource Calendar as 8:00 AM to 4:30PM along
time ago. I looked at the Project Information and it says that it is using
the Standard Calendar. I looked at the Standard Calendar and it shows 7.5
hours but I look at the individual Resource Calendars and it shows 8 hours
of working time for each (8:00 to 5:00). So I reset the Standard Calendar to
7.5 hours again, saved it and reopened the project. Those two tasks that it
changed the duration to 8h are now changed to 7.5 h. So it looks like it
automatically changed the duration to what a Working Day is ( and somehow my
non-standard working day wasn't picked up. But it is now.)

Does that help?

Steve

 

[Steve Lundwall]

Silly me, I had Fixed Units selected.Switching to Fixed Duration solved the
problem.

Steve

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Steve --

Thanks for letting us know how you solved the problem.