Question About "Status Date" Behavior

[L. Davis]

Hello,

We are learning how to utilize the "status date" feature for tracking
updates to our milestone plan. The PMO team was previously making
manual weekly updates to these plans but we would prefer to start
having milestone owners log in and make updates through PWA. Ideally,
if someone marks a milestone 100% complete on, say, Friday, 4/10/09,
and the update is approved into the plan on Monday, 4/13/09, the
status date set to 4/10/09 would force the finish date to be 4/10/09
rather than 4/13/09. This is what we are trying to do for different
combinations of start and finish dates (i.e. current start/current
finish; current start/future finish; past start/current finish; future
start/future finish; past start/future finish; and past start/past
finish).

The 4 checkboxes are (Tools --> Options --> Calculation tab):
1 - Move end of completed parts after status date back to status date
1a - And move start of remaining parts back to status date
2 - Move start of remaining parts before status date forward to status
date
2a - And move end of completed parts forward to status date

In testing out the behavior of the task finish dates under the various
scenarios that these 4 checkboxes create, I have not been able to find
100% consistency with the status date results. I have found that no
combination of the past, current, and future start and finish dates
create results where if I mark all the milestones complete in PWA and
then incorporate the results using a start date set to a recent past
date (for example, 4/10/09), ALL the finish dates are updated to
4/10/09. In the scenario that almost passed, when all 4 boxes are
checked, one scenario still fails:

Past Start date/Current Finish date: The finish date at the resource
level is equal to the status date (4/10/09) but the task-level finish
date does NOT equal status date. The finish date at the task level is
updated to 4/17/09 (current date, not the status date).
This same scenario fails when more then one resource is assigned to it
and both mark the milestone 100% complete.

This is all very difficult to explain, but perhaps I just don't
understand the behavior of each well enough to determine how it is
generating the finish dates. Can you provide any insight into how
this would work best?

Thanks!

 

[Gary L. Chefetz]

L:

I sounds like you are wanting to make this happen by the owners simply
setting percent complete. The problem here is that you aren't giving the
system an actual completing date. What you need to do is add the Actual
Finish Date field to the My Tasks page forcing the system to accept the
user-specified complete data rather than trying to calculate one. When using
Project, it's wise to keep in mind that Project will try to calculate
schedule data that you don't provide. All of these behaviors are explainable
and predictable, but why not get the data from the actual provider?

--
----------
Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
Project Server Training: http://www.projectservertraining.com
Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
Project Server Help Blog: http://www.projectserverhelp.com

 

[L. Davis]

Gary - I responded yesterday but it didn't post to the group so I'm
not sure you recevied my follow up questions. Thank you for your
advice, and we will try to get the data from the end user rather than
relying on calculations from the status date feature. I tried
inserting the Actual Finish date column into the view in PWA, but the
column is blank and a user is not able to edit it. How do I configure
this so that a user can edit this field?

We had a similar issue with the "Status" and "Resource Names" (as
opposed to "Resource Name") columns. When I insert them into the PWA
view, both columns are blank. I would like to display the same data
that we see in the workplan (i.e. milestone status of on schedule/late/
future task and the names of resources assigned to each task). This
data would not need to be edited by the user.

Just as an FYI, we are using Project Server 2003 for this. We've
upgraded our other project plans to 2007 but due to some reporting
issues we are not transferring our milestone/dependency plans over to
the new server yet.

Thanks again!
Lindsay

 

[Gary L. Chefetz]

Lindsay:

Good thing you reposted as I didn't see the post, however I haven't been
seeing some of my own posts lately! The Microsoft news servers are a bit
flakey at times. Have a look at this:

http://www.projectserverexperts.com/ProjectServerFAQKnowledgeBase/changetimesheet.aspx

There are definitely fields that you can't use in the My Tasks page, some
because the data doesn't display at that range, and some because the users
do not have access to the data. Meanwhile, the FAQ should get you further
down the road.

--
----------
Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
Project Server Training: http://www.projectservertraining.com
Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
Project Server Help Blog: http://www.projectserverhelp.com


Gary - I responded yesterday but it didn't post to the group so I'm
not sure you recevied my follow up questions. Thank you for your
advice, and we will try to get the data from the end user rather than
relying on calculations from the status date feature. I tried
inserting the Actual Finish date column into the view in PWA, but the
column is blank and a user is not able to edit it. How do I configure
this so that a user can edit this field?

We had a similar issue with the "Status" and "Resource Names" (as
opposed to "Resource Name") columns. When I insert them into the PWA
view, both columns are blank. I would like to display the same data
that we see in the workplan (i.e. milestone status of on schedule/late/
future task and the names of resources assigned to each task). This
data would not need to be edited by the user.

Just as an FYI, we are using Project Server 2003 for this. We've
upgraded our other project plans to 2007 but due to some reporting
issues we are not transferring our milestone/dependency plans over to
the new server yet.

Thanks again!
Lindsay