Project Tasks Desynched

[Ray Powers]

I have a project called Router Configuration. This project had roughly 15
tasks (small project) while in discovery. During elaboration, we reorganized
the project plan, deleted most of the tasks, and created a new task list
under the new ideas. We had published the first version. When we were ready,
we published the project again, deleting all the old tasks. A month went by
and we successfully completed the project, setting it to 100%.

Now, three weeks after the project has been 100% complete, some of the tasks
from the original task list are beginning to show up on people's task list,
as 0% complete. For example someone has a task of "re-cable for new router"
at 0%, over due by two months, when that task no longer even exists. If I
open the project in Microsoft project, the task is not there, and I never
saved a baseline since the project was so short.

Publishing the project yet again did nothing, nor did Republishing
assignments.

My simple question is what is the best way to get rid of these? I resorted
to having the individuals "re-complete" them in their timesheet and resubmit
them. I accepted the updates and the server tried to update the tasks, but of
course could not since they no longer existed. It gave an error, but hey, the
tasks were gone for those people. But I am not sure this is the best method.

The more important question, however, is what would cause this to begin
with? It looks like some form of synchronization issue between the actual
projects and the task lists, but I have no idea what would cause it and how
to prevent it. Needless to say this is causing us a lot of concern about the
validity of the data we are getting from Project, so I'd like to solve it
immediately and have a reason for it.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Ray

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Ray:

The cause is fairly simple: You can't just delete tasks in the project plan
after they've been published. You need first to close them out by removing
remaining work, and the resource, publishing these changes and then you can
delete the tasks. By deleting the tasks without regard to closing out the
assignments, you effectively created a raft of orphaned assignments.

--


Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
"We wrote the books on Project Server"
http://www.msprojectexperts.com

For Project Server FAQs visit
http://www.projectserverexperts.com

For Project FAQs visit
http://www.mvps.org/project

 

[Ray Powers]

Hi Gary,

Thanks for the response!

While I understand what you are saying, I don't think it is the basis of my
issue. I had three more tasks "become new again" that were not deleted and,
in fact, if you open up the project plan, you can see them as 100% complete.
But on the resources Task List, they still show up. Republishing Assignments
or doing a Publish All again does not seem to remove them.

But, out of curiosity, when I do a delete task, and go to Publish New or
Changed Assignments, Project specifically mentions that "tasks were deleted
to you want to notify the resources now?" andf I answer yes. Are you saying
that this does not actually clean the task out of the lists and is instead
creating orphans? It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. A task shouldn't
have to be completed to be deleted. In fact, most "deleted tasks" are not
completed because it turns out they don't need to be done any more...

Any additional information would be greatly appreciated. I really
appreciated the people who post responses to this board.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Ray:

Notifying the resources simply places an X in the indicator column in the
timesheet. This is a cue to the resource to hide the task. If you can't get
people to do this, you can run an SQL query to do this for them.

What you're saying about tasks becoming new again is a strange behavior, but
I'm sure there's a good explanation for it. Is it worth the effort? If the
tasks you're seeing in the timesheet truly match a project task, then you
should be able to update it to complete on the timesheet by republishing and
selecting to overwrite actual work checkbox in the republish dialog.

--


Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
"We wrote the books on Project Server"
http://www.msprojectexperts.com

For Project Server FAQs visit
http://www.projectserverexperts.com

For Project FAQs visit
http://www.mvps.org/project

 

[Ray Powers]

Hey again, Gary. =)

Notifying the resources simply places an X in the indicator column in the
timesheet. This is a cue to the resource to hide the task. If you can't get
people to do this, you can run an SQL query to do this for them.

I actually run a script hourly that removes deleted tasks that I pulled off
of this very forum. =)

What you're saying about tasks becoming new again is a strange behavior, but
I'm sure there's a good explanation for it. Is it worth the effort? If the
tasks you're seeing in the timesheet truly match a project task, then you
should be able to update it to complete on the timesheet by republishing and
selecting to overwrite actual work checkbox in the republish dialog.

Well, that's the problem. I have done that and it hasn't worked. It remains
on the resources task sheet with the incorrect data. So it becomes an issue
because I am asking the resources to utilize project for updates and to
understand their task schedule, but Project is giving them the wrong data, so
confidence in the product is hitting an all time low, and we all know how
successful these things go when people don't believe in them. So yeah, it is
worth it to find out, because the alternative is continually giving my
resources incorrect information. =/

One of our support guys found not one but two hot fix patches that seem like
they may address this issue.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/891203/

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/891961

I'm just going to have to hope that these work. We're backing up and making
a test environment today to try it out in.

Ray

 

[Dan]

Ray,

Did installing the hot fixes correct teh problem for you?

--
Dan Beebe
Manager, Technology & Development
Vision2Reality

 

[Ray Powers]

Hey Dan,

No, it didn't. We moved to the timesheet system, and since now they do the
updates and send them to me, its less of an issue, but it is still happening.

Ray

 

[Dan]

Rats! We were going to have the teams start entering their own timesheet
updates, and probably still will - I just was hoping that it would 'fix' the
problem.

Thanks!

--
Dan Beebe
Manager, Technology & Development
Vision2Reality

Hey Dan,

No, it didn't. We moved to the timesheet system, and since now they do the
updates and send them to me, its less of an issue, but it is still happening.

Ray