Duplicate Tasks within PWA

[Adam Bennett]

Hi all
I tried posting this in the developer group, but didn't really get any
response. I thought that it was being monitored by MS, but that may not be
the case. Thought I'd post here to see if any one has any thoughts/ideas.
Thanks in advance for any help.

We recently implemented MS Project Enterprise and ran into a problem with a
task user's time not showing up in the actuals back in the project plan. We
noticed that it shows his time was approved in PWA, but doesn't show up in
the Task Usage view.

I looked in the Adjust Actuals function within PWA to see if I could
manually adjust the time for him, when I noticed that there were two copies
of the tasks appearing for him. One had his time posted to it and the other
didn't. The second task appeared to be the task from the project plan as it
had the same values.

Here are the details of each:
Task: Go Live - version 1
Work: 2.25
Remaining: 0
% Comp: 100%
Start: 4/12/06
End: 4/12/06
Actual Work: 2.25 - entered on 4/10/06 and submitted to server on 4/11/06

Task: Go Live - version 2
Work: 1.33 hrs
Remaining: 1.33 hrs
% Comp: 0%
Start: 4/10/06
End: 4/10/06
Actual Work: no time entered

In looking within the plan and also within portfolio analyzer, it only shows
one task (the 1.33 hrs task). In attempting to resolve the issue, I went
into the plan and manually changed the time for this user on this task to
2.25 and then republished assignements with overwritting the actuals. This
marked the task as complete within the plan, but when I went back into Adjust
Actuals, both tasks now show 2.25 hrs entered.

It almost appears as if the task that the user entered time to lost a
reference key within the db for some reason and then created a copy at some
point (maybe when the PM published assignements/changes). I don't understand
the db schema so that may not be the case, but I guess I'm more concerned
about how this happened instead of how to fix this specific instance. As a
side note, we're not using managed time or using master project plans at all
as it seems these can be the culprit of duplicate tasks at times.

Does anyone have any idea how this occurred and how to fix it. Given that
it's such a small amount of time and that we're still working out the kinks,
we can live with the extra 2.25 hrs showing up in reports, etc., but I'm more
concerned about how to avoid this in the future.

I also have screenshots of everything (PWA, project plan, etc) if that
would be helpful to see.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Adam

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Adam:

One way this might have happened: The manager created a second version of
the task, maybe manually, maybe cut-and paste using this technique, rather
than properly moving the task. Then the manager deleted the original
published task from the plan before closing out the resource assignment.
That left two assignments in the database. The orphan which contains the
actual work, and its cloned sibling.

 

[TP]

Hello
For Adam: Your description is quite long and I have not time to try to
understand well your issue. Note that we have experienced duplicate taks in
PWA and MS support knows this issue. There is a script to detect duplicates
and to manualy adjust.

For Gary: could you please confirm that in Project, we must not Cut and
paste Tasks but have to drag and drop them. Thanks
"Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]" a écrit :

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

TP:

Most assuredly, yes.

Hello
For Adam: Your description is quite long and I have not time to try to
understand well your issue. Note that we have experienced duplicate taks
in
PWA and MS support knows this issue. There is a script to detect
duplicates
and to manualy adjust.

For Gary: could you please confirm that in Project, we must not Cut and
paste Tasks but have to drag and drop them. Thanks
"Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]" a écrit :