Resource assigned but didn't work on a task

[Babar.Asif]

Suppose 2 resources were assigned to a task. However, only one resource
worked on it. Now how should you enter the actual hours given that I
don't want to unassign the resource from the task and republish it?

Should I enter actual work = 0hr and remaining work = 0hr for that
resource who didn't work on the task? When I do that, the task doesn't
show as complete in the resource timesheet.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Babar

 

[RickD]

You cannot enter a zero timesheet in PWA. You need to open the plan in Pro,
switch to the Task Usage view and zero the WORK for the task/period that the
second person did not work. DO NOT accidentally update Actual Work because
you will be out of sync with timesheets. Publish New & Changed.

 

[mark.everett]

Babar -

I recently read about a bug where 0 hours are treated as null instead.
I have seen people enter 1 hour, then change it back to 0 and that
worked. Of course, if you manually change the % complete, it will
assign hours to the resource.

The best way to do it is to open the project and then use Assign
Resources to remove resource number 2 (who won't have any actuals) and
then republish that task.

Hope this helps,
Mark Everett | PMP
www.quantumpm.com

 

[Scott Morrissey]

We, too, have found that an assignment with 0 acutal and 0 remaining stays on
your timesheet because the % Complete field stays at 0% (no work was actually
done). I wish Microsoft would change this. If there is no remaining work, it
can be a "current" tasks!

The only way we found to get rid of it is to delete the assignment and
re-publish. The resource can then hide the task which will have the Black "X"

 

[Babar.Asif]

Thank you all for the useful insights. Couple of other questions:

1- Given that one of the resource has entered actual work for that task
and if you unassign the other resource, would it cause you to lose the
actual work values?
2- If you mark the work for the resource who didn't work on the task as
0h, would it adjust duration for the task overall? What happens to
baseline work values in this scenario? They won't be accurate as far as
I understand.

Babar

 

[Scott Morrissey]

1 - No, by removing the assignment of the resource with 0 actual will not
effect the hours by the other resource. Just make sure you delete only the
resource that you want.

2 - By zeroing out the remaining hours on the assignment may effect the end
date of the task depending on your settings. You can make note of what the
duration and dates are before doing it - and adjust it back if it changes.
The baseline information won't be change in this case - but will change if
you remove them in the first scenario.

Hope this helps.

 

[ITG_Mike]

I got tired of this BUG in PWA where tasks with 0h actual work and 0h
remaning work are treated as not completed. Our users have been trained to
mark tasks as complete by entering zero remaining work, so it annoyed them
when the tasks would not disappear.

I solved the problem by writing a little procedure that looks in the web
assigment table for assignments that have 0h actual work, 0h remainig work
and PCT complete <100. I then set the PCT complete for these assignments to
100. Poof - they disappear. This procedure runs automatically every day.

Microsoft should fix this, but since they take many months to fix big bugs
that cause data loss, I don't expect this to be fixed any time soon.