Custom Fields

[Karen]

I'm setting up a project and my boss wants a few specific
fields. There are 4 date fields she wants. "Actual
Start" - "Actual Finish"- "Projected Start"- "Projected
Finish" - I see that Actual Start and Finish is already a
predefined field. How do I go about adding the fields I
want? I noticed that I can customize fields. In my case,
should the fields be customized or do I just rename
the "Actual Finish" to "Projected Finish" or is renaming
them considered customizing?

Thank you for your help

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

Hello karen,
MS Project already presents the "Actual Start" and "Actual Finish" fields.
You can change the "Title" of the "Start" field as "Projected Start"
and the title of "Finish" as "Projected Finish" : double clicl the label
of the field .

Gérard Ducouret

 

[JulieS]

Hi Karen,

You actually already have everything your boss is searching for. The
"Actual Start" and "Actual Finish" fields as you have discovered are already
there. Those fields are used when tracking progress on projects and will
reflect what really happened in the project - when did the task (or
resources) really start, and when did the task really finish. The Start and
Finish fields are what your boss is looking for in "Projected Start" and
"Projected Finish". Those fields contain the scheduled start and finished
for the tasks. When you save a baseline, the dates and times in the Start
and Finish fields are copied to the Baseline Start and Baseline Finish fields.

Changing the title of the field (for example changing the Start title to
Projected Start) is not considered customizing the underlying data.

Hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie

 

[JackD]

I think that the projected start and projected finish should be baseline
start and baseline finish rather than start and finish.
Start and Finish change to become the same as Actual Start and Actual Finish
when the information is entered.

I'd compare Start to Baseline Start and Finish to Baseline Finish.
Reasoning is that Start is equivalent to Actual Start once the task has
started so there will be no value in comparing them.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

For what it's worth, I think of the plain vanilla Start and Finish fields as
showing the history of what happened in the past once actuals have been
entered and what is forecast for things in the future, based on what has
happened so far. They answer the question "Where will we end up if things
keep on going the way they have been?" The baseline shows your initial
projection, but I would interpret a request for "Projected Start" etc to
show what can be forecast *now* as to what is going to be happening in the
future, not what it looked like months ago when we did the original plan.
We need to account for the fact that what has happened so far may deviate
from our original estimates, thus impacting the original baseline
projections and rendering them invalid predictors of future performance.