Current Tasks / All Tasks - Would you like PWA to display ACTIVE t

[ITG_Mike]

I've made this comment before, but it is end of the year audit time and we
are having a bunch of problems with invalid task list entries that we have to
hunt down and correct, so I thought it was time for this comment again.

Project Web Access provides two views of my task list - All Tasks and
Current Tasks. "All Tasks" displays everything - stuff from this week, last
week, last month, last year, hundreds or thousands of tasks for most of our
resources. This includes completed tasks.

"Current Tasks" displays a more appropriate list of things that a resource
is currently working on. One of the ways it does this is by filtering
completed tasks. Unfortunately, it filters a completed task (once it has
been accepted and updated by the PM) even if you worked on in this week, just
yesterday, or today. Therein lies the problem.

We regularly have the situation where a resource will review a past day (or
last week) in their task list and forget to change the task list display to
"All Tasks". They see a day where they appear to have not enough hours and
make an entry. What has really happened is that the existing entry is on a
completed task and was filtered - PRESTO they now have a TOO MANY hours
reported when we do reporting from the database

Why can't PWA have a view of ACTIVE TASKS? This would include everything in
the "Current Tasks" view AND any task that I CHARGED TIME to in the visible
period. This would make the system much easier to use and far less error
prone.

Does anyone else what this?

 

[ITG_Mike]

Stupid little typo in the last line...

Does anyone else WANT this "Active Tasks" view.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

ITG_Mike --

I believe you can make your wishes known to Microsoft by sending an e-mail
message to (e-mail address removed) and including Project in the Subject. Hope
this helps.

 

[10K]

ITG_Mike,
I wholeheartedly agree with your suggestion and can easily see how this
occurs. I agree with your suggestion to add this feature.

In the meantime, I can suggest a procedural workaround that works for me.

From your description, the team members are entering their hours on a daily
(?) basis and updating. They do this early in the week, complete a task,
then, later in the week when they return, the task completed task is filtered
out and the earlier day's hours now appear short.

My suggestion is that, rather than using Update when they put in the hours,
use Save instead. Accumulate all of the changes for the week, then, once a
week, use Update. The user can still enter hours daily.

In this scenario, the tasks are not marked complete until Update, so they
continue to stay on the view.

Of course, if the PMs need daily updates, this won't work. In that case,
you could probably create a custom task field for Active based on end date,
add that to the timesheet view, and filter the All Tasks view based on that
until Microsoft implements your suggestion.
Good luck,
10K

 

[ITG_Mike]

10K,

We actually do what you suggest, but still have problems fairly regularly.
Here is an example of how this happens.

A resource updates their time on Friday. Unfortunately, the PM is out that
Friday, so the updates do not get accepted and processed. The Resource
continues entering time the following week and on Monday adds two hours to a
task (call it task A) that was part of the prior week's update. This task
has no remaining work.

The PM returns to work on Tuesday and processes time submissions from the
prior week. All of the resource hours are processed, including the time
submission from Monday of THIS week on Task A. Task A is now filtered from
the Current Task list.

The resource continues entering time on Tuesday - Friday, and then validates
their time entries Friday afternoon before updating. "Oops" they think. "I
only entered six hours on Monday". They "Correct" this by entering two hours
on an appropriate task (typically a related development task in the same
project) and update.

Presto - Monday now has 10 hours of time reported when only 8 hours was
worked.

Having a view of ACTIVE tasks would solve this problem. Completely.

Michael