Change an enterprise field based on a native field via SQL

[Joseph R. Ollero]

I have a enterprise field that I’ve created called True Finish Date. This
field is intended to show the date that the task was completed and submitted
to pwa. I haven’t been able to find a field that tracks the actual
completion date, rather everything basically duplicates what has been
recorded in the project schedule. How can we capture the date the task was
submitted to pwa, then automatically populate the Enterprise Field True
Finish Date?

 

[Stephen Sanderlin]

I'm not sure what you mean. Actual Finish tracks the date that an
assignment, task, or project completed. Why would you have an Actual
Finish in the schedule that didn't represent the actual completion date?

--
Stephen Sanderlin
Principal Consultant
MSProjectExperts

For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server Training: http://www.projectservertraining.com

Read my blog at: http://www.projectserverhelp.com
Join the community at: http://forums.epmfaq.com

 

[Gary L. Chefetz]

Joseph:

If your observation is that all actual finish dates track identically to
planned finish dates, then your PMs are not using the software correctly or
are using it in a very limited way. When you enter percent complete, for
instance, the tool has to assume that the actual start date and actual
finish date happened exactly as planned unless you also collect these from
the user. If you are using Project Server, you can add these fields to the
My Tasks page so that your users can report them. You do not need to code a
solution, you need to change your process.

 

[Joseph R. Ollero]

I set up a test project, changed the tracking method to Actual Work Don and
Work remaining, made sure that the project server allowed for PMs to select
their own tracking method and scheduled tasks.

The results were the same. Actual Finish Date autopopulates with the
Scheduled Finish Date. We don’t use timesheets, yet, but just to make sure
that wasn’t an issue, I created a timesheet period, and completed a task with
the time sheet showing actual dates later than the scheduled finish date and
received the same result. Have you noticed the behavior in your environment?
I opened a case with Microsoft months ago and the answer I was given was
that Project doesn’t populate the date that the task was completed

 

[Joseph R. Ollero]

Also, I'm thinking of coding a solution, however, I am not a .net developer.
My specialization is database development.

I've been searching the net for quite a while for references on how I can
create a stored procedure to update my field, strangely enough, it doesnt
seem to be a common approach (going though the back-end).

Would you know any sites where I can get more insights on how I can do this
through the backend?

 

[Stephen Sanderlin]

I can't vouch for the veracity of any information you were given prior
to this discussion, but Project will set Actual Finish to the value in
Finish if you set the % Complete of a task to 100%. It will also do this
in many cases if you adjust only Actual Work and never decrement
Remaining Work.

You can demonstrate this yourself with a simple test. Open a new Project
file and create a new task. Give it 5d of Duration. Note that Actual
Finish is initially set to NA. Set % Complete to 100%, and the Actual
Finish will populate with the value in Finish. Now, if you subtract a
day from either Finish or Actual Finish, Duration should reduce to 4d.
This is true regardless of the Task Type or Effort Driven settings this
task uses. A similar experiment with "Actual Work" and "Remaining Work"
will yield similar results.

FYI, timesheets have no bearing on a project schedule without use of
either an automated (e.g. Christophe's AutoStatus Service) or manual
(e.g. the Import Timesheet button) process. This page
(http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc197640.aspx) has a more
in-depth explanation of the concepts around entering and submitting work
in PWA.

If you want to use % Complete and track Actual Start and Actual Finish
then you need to add these two fields to the My Tasks view so that users
can enter this information. If you want to use "Actual Work", then your
team members need to decrement Remaining Work to pull in the Finish
Date. Without doing either of these things, the Scheduling Engine makes
assumptions based upon the limited information it has -- namely, that
work was (or is being) completed exactly as planned.

The reality is that "Percent of work complete" and "Actual Work done and
work remaining" are both inherently inaccurate methods of task tracking.
If you need tight control over the schedule's dates and actuals, then
you ought to consider using "Hours of work done per period". Again, you
do not necessarily have to use Timesheets to do this (and may find it
inconvenient to do so).

--
Stephen Sanderlin
Principal Consultant
MSProjectExperts

For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server Training: http://www.projectservertraining.com

Read my blog at: http://www.projectserverhelp.com
Join the community at: http://forums.epmfaq.com

 

[Gary L. Chefetz]

Joseph:

The results are the same because once again you selected a tracking method
that doesn't gather enough input from the user to make the date changes. The
only way it will work is to use hours by day reporting.