Creation of new formula to calculate Remaining Work

[Katie B]

Greetings,

In doing some investigation in Project Professional, I've discovered
how to create new Published Fields in the Enterprise Global and how to
create formulas, but for some reason, the new formula that I created
for a modified Remaining Work is calculating the wrong end results that
I'm looking for. Is there an easier way to simply modify the current
Remaining Work field, so that instead of calculating "Work - Actual
Work," it calculates "Baseline Work - Actual Work?" All tasks in our
project are Fixed Work and are calculated in (hrs). I unfortunately
did not originally create our work plan, and the creators are no longer
on this project to refer to for questions, which has made this kind of
a challenge.

Any clues as to how this is done? And please let me know if you need
more information than what I've provided.

Also, I was browsing in the Customize Enterprise Fields (which are also
Published fields) within the Enterprise Global to locate the fields
that we publish, such as Start Date, End Date, Baseline Work, Actual
Work and Remaining Work, etc, and I cannot seem to find them to make
modifications. I've tried checking all radio buttons relating to
Fields: Task, Resource and Project and I've tried all selections from
the Type: DropDown box from Cost to Text and cannot locate any of the
fields. Am I looking in the wrong spot for these?

Any advice you could pass along would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Katie Begell

 

[Reid McTaggart]

You can't modify the built in (non-custom) fields such as Start, Remaining
Work, etc.

What was the formula you created, and which custom field did you use?
You're on the right track creating a formula in a custom field.

 

[Katie B]

Hi Reid,

Here are the steps that I took:

In Checked-out Enterprise Global...
Customize-->Enterprise Fields
Field radio button = Task
Type DropDown = Number
Renamed Enterprise Number1 to ETC
Hit Formula
Entered the following fields in the text box: [Baseline Work]-[Actual
Work]
Hit Ok

I wasn't sure how I was supposed to handle the fact that this number is
in fact measured in hrs, which is what is creating the problem, I
think.

So then I saved the change, and then reopened a current work plan,
inserted the new field and the values in the new field were way off.
In a situation where a summary task has 6656 hrs Baseline Work and 2783
hrs Actual Work, the new ETC field has the value 232380 and no measure
of hrs or anything.

Any suggestions as to how I can improve the formula?

Katie Begell

 

[Reid McTaggart]

Change your formula to:
([Baseline Work]-[Actual Work])/60

 

[Katie B]

Hmmm...I tried what you suggested and then tried adding ( ) around the
entire function and neither seemed to work when opening the work plan
to the Task Usage view.

I did however go back in to the Customize options and changed the Field
to Resource instead of Task and used the formula and that worked. That
is, when I went into the Resource Usage view, I was able to
successfully add the new ETC column and the values calculated
correctly. The only 2 things lacking: the identifier "hrs" after the
numerical value within the field and also the lack of values at the
task level. The fields only populated at the resource level (the
summary/rollup task)...which I guess can be attributed to the fact that
when I customized the field, I chose Resource, not Task. Shouldn't
there be an option when Customizing Enterprise Fields for Assignment in
the Field options or should there only be Task, Resource and Project?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks again for your continued help Reid! You've been great!

Katie

 

[Reid McTaggart]

You do have to open, recalc, and publish a project for the data to appear in
PWA.

If you want it by task, choose a task field. A resource field that uses
work-related fields in its formula is an assignment field.

If you want hrs after the number, then use a text field, such as Enterprise
Text 1:

([Baseline Work] - [Actual Work])/60 & " hrs"

 

[Katie B]

Hi Reid,

When adding in "hrs," do you simply put a space after the equation and
then hrs in quotes or do you use the function dropdown (next to the
field dropdown) and select an option from the Date/Time section?

I tried just doing hrs in quotes and it didn't seem to work, even when
I changed the Field Type to Text instead of Number.

When I added the new column in MS Project Professional, the values came
up as "# ERROR."

Katie Begell

 

[Reid McTaggart]

You should use the formula syntax I showed, including the ampersand. And put
an equals sign at the front of the formula.

Save Enterprise Global, close Project Pro. Restart Project, open a project
and recalc (F9) to see the results.

If you don't have a baseline, you'll still get an error.