Moving remaininng parts

[Garon]

In the Project Options there are checkboxes to define
a) Move Start of Remaining parts before status date forward to status date
b) And move end of completed parts forward to status date.

Dryen have set these checkboxes to checked for all Projects, yet outstanding
Tasks (full or part) do not seem to move as expected. The start and end
dates/times remain where they were originally defined.

Has anyone else had this exoperience. I have search MS KB's and can not
found it logged as a fault anywhere. Is there any other options that need to
be define to ensure this feature works.

 

[Rod Gill]

Have you changed the Status date? If you leave it as NA it will always be
the same as today's date.

 

[Garon]

My reading of the manual on this is that the Status Date is set to the
Current Date where it is note specifically defined by the user.

However, my recollection is that we tried both leaving and setting the
Status date and got the same results. I can arrange to retest this to be
absolutely sure.

 

[Aaron Tamblyn]

Hi Garon,

These options relate to the behaviour of the system when you set the %
complete for a task. They define how tasks will be updated around the status
date.

When you are updating you schedule are you modifying the % complete for a
task? You can do this using the Tracking Toolbar.

If you are looking at updating all your tasks by bringing them forward to
the status date, you can do that in one step through Tools > Tracking >
Update Project...

Please can you supply some detail on the steps you follow to update tasks
and when you are expecting recalculation to occur.

Thanks.

 

[Garon]

Thanks Aaron,

The users are entering Status details in PWA. Project Managers are then
approving these task status changes. Where the user has stated a task is 50%
complete, or any percent complete, I would expect it should move the
completed and incomplete parts as suggested by the options.

The option
Tools > Tracking > Update Project...
may help, but there are over 300 jobs that are being updated. It is
frustrating enough that it needs to launch Winproj to do the update of PWA
statuses. Adding an extra manual step to move incomplete parts is another
blow to efficiency, but if it moves things forwar it is a help.

Is the "Move incomplete parts ..." functionality only valid when changing %
complete in MS Project and not when approving time in PWA.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Garon:

Are you collecting percent complete and remaining work only in PWA? If so,
how would project know what date to move things to? When collecting percent
complete, Project will assume that the start and end dates do not change
unless you tell it to change them. In order to get this working correctly,
you need to collect actual start and actual finish dates from your users in
addition to percent complete, or collect hours worked by day.

 

[Garon]

Thanks Gary,

Given the approval process launches the winproj file and requires the
projectc to be republished we would expect that it would then have the same
way as statusinng teh task inside the winform application.

Setting the status to 50% in the winform app shoudl be no different to
setting the status in PWA, then approving that status in the winform.

Project should check the Current or Status date and apply the standard
winproj rules regardinng moving incomplete parts.

Given we need to suffer the annoying launch ofthe winproj winform it would
be nice if it used the controls in that form to handle the updates according
to the standard behaviour of the product.

If it is a product deficiency we can look to develop a work around. I was
just keen to know if it is a configuration issue or product deficiency.
--
Garon Line

Garon:

Are you collecting percent complete and remaining work only in PWA? If so,
how would project know what date to move things to? When collecting percent
complete, Project will assume that the start and end dates do not change
unless you tell it to change them. In order to get this working correctly,
you need to collect actual start and actual finish dates from your users in
addition to percent complete, or collect hours worked by day.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Garon:

I don't see that this works any different on either side of the fence.
Updating percent complete alone does not change the dates. The behaviors are
the same, except with PWA, a conduit for the information is added, but the
behavior in Project doesn't change. Understanding Project's behavior is
enough to know that you must collect dates with percent complete tracking if
you expect dates to move dynamically.

 

[John Sitka]

->Setting the status to 50% in the winform app shoudl be no different to
->setting the status in PWA, then approving that status in the winform.

But it is different. Project is a desktop application with minimal exposure to the enterprise.
There is no server side calculation going on. Only a set of values gathered from PWA
awaiting to be applied to the application. Once those values are applied to the project the
application can (if the calculation settings allow it) recalculate dates, splits, and task boundary shifts.

So how could setting Project calculation settings in the destop application affect the use of PWA?
What would those settings be used "by"? There is no PWA service "calculation part" to use them.


"Move incomplete parts ..." is only valid once the project is calculated, which can only be done via the desktop application.