Changing start and end times when copying tasks to a new Project P

[Peter Rooney]

I have recently spent a lot of time setting the start and end times (as
against dates) of tasks in my departmental project plan to match our working
day (09:00 to 13:00 and 14:00 to 17:30 - 7.5 hours) by setting the format of
the start and end dates to display the times too, then manually changing them
(multiple raised eyebrows andglances to heaven from worldwide project users -
yes, I KNOW!)

Our working time on the standard calendar was originally 08:00 to 12:00 and
13:00-17:00, giving a working day of 8 hours, which was incorrect.

I have modified the Standard calendar to reflect these times, and ensured
that all resource calendars match them too, at least for the periods in
question, but set the tasks to ignore resource calendars anyway (who's been
reading his manuals, then?)

However, when I filter my plan and copy the filtered data to a new plan,
some of the start and end times change e.g. Start Date of 03/12/04 09:00
becomes 013/12/04 14:30. In fairness, most of the timesdon't change, which
makes it all the more puzzling - I would have expected them to be all right,
or all wrong...

The calendar assignations for the "corrupted" tasks in the new plan are the
same, and as far as I can see, nothing else has changed.

Does anybody out there have any suggestions as to what could be causing
this? I've spent a lot of time writing VBA to extract filtered areas of my
plan (specific projects, teams and resources) to seperate plan files which
can then be emailed, but if my extracts show different data, then it's not
going to be viable.

Cheers

Pete

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

When you enter a value in the Start field it sets it to your desired date by
establishing a Start No Earlier Than constraint on the task. Project will
never schedule it earlier than that point in time but there's nothing that
says it can't be pushed out and scheduled LATER than that bound by Project's
scheduling engine if driven out by links and/or resource availability and
leveling.

Look for links and at the ending times for the predecessor tasks. My
calendar is initially 08:00-12:00 and 13:00-17:00. I enter a 1 day task on
Mon and a second one on for Tuesday and link them FS. Task 1 begins Mon at
08:00 and requires 8 hours of work and task 2 begins Tue at 08:00, also
requiring 8 hours of work. Now I change my calendar to read 09:00-13:00 and
14:00-17:30. Task 1 will now start at 09:00 but by the end of our day we
will have only done 7.5 hours of work and we still need to do another 30 min
to finish. So the finish changes to Tue at 09:30. The link says task 2
can't start until task 1 is done, so task 2 now is scheduled to begin Tue at
09:30. By the end of the day on Tue we have done 7 out of the required 8
hours for task 2 so its finish will become Wed at 10:00. I've entered Tue
at 09:00 as the time I *want* task 2 to start but it that doesn't actually
fix the start point, it simply defines the *earliest* it can start - the
link from task 1 then kicks in and says "Even though I could start it at
09:00 if everything else was ready, the required components coming over from
task 1 won't arrive before 10:00 so I have to delay the start until they get
here."

Make sure that the times for default start and end and the conversion
factors for duration units (hours per day, hours per week) found on the
Tools Options Calendar page match the hours of work in your Project
Calendar.

My earlier admonitions still hold and you're now encountering another of the
consequences of trying to use Project in a way other than its designers
intended. Trying to get creative inevitably opens a can of worms and the
headaches only get worse the farther along you go.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Left off another possible cause of your problem here. You said previously
you had entered both start and finish times for some of your tasks. As
mentioned before, entering a start time puts a Start No Earlier Than
constraint on the task. Entering a finish puts a Finish No Earlier Than
constraint on the task. The constraint that remains on the task is the
latter one entered so what you end up with depends on the order you have
entered the data. If I have a task and I enter a start of 20/1/05 09:00 and
a finish of 21/1/05 15:00, you'll find the start will become 20/1/05 15:00.
You have said the earliest it can start is 09:00 but then you said the
earliest it can finish is 15:00 the next day. The duration has defaulted to
1 day and I haven't changed it. For a 1 day task to finish no earlier than
15:00, the time it must start is 15:00 the previous day so even though it
could start as early as 09:00, it won't because 15:00 is the time that
results in the required duration elapsing before the earliest possible
finish. (Had I put in a duration the exact numbers might change but the
principal still applies).

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

I'll have to check farther - can you send me the file as before?

Steve

 

[JulieD]

Hi Peter

how do you get a milestone showing 0 days when you've got different times on
it????
not sure if this is your problem but it would certainly cause me some
concern.

additionally, does task2 have any predecessors (anything listed in task
information, predecessor tab)? (and i'm assuming you're scheduling from a
start date?)

Cheers
JulieD

 

[Peter Rooney]

Oops, my mistake!

Task 1 29/11/04 09:00 29/11/04 09:00 0 days
Task 2 03/12/04 09:00 17/12/04 17:30 11 days (SNET 03/12/04)

The start and end times were the same for the milestone task - i.e. 09:00!
Sorry for any confusion caused!

I've tried just copying and pasting the data for this sub-project manually
(as against using my VBA routines) and the result is still the same - the
start time for task 2 changes to 14:30. I'm baffled!

Pete

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

(e-mail address removed) removing the obvious