Default task constraints

[#1]

Description - Need the ability to change the default task constraint in setup

Why is this feature important to you - Lots of time is spent manually changing from "As soon as possible" to "Fixed dates" on ad hoc tasks outside of templated tasks

How would you like the feature to work - Setup > Tasks > Set default constraint

Current Behaviour - defaults as  "As soon as possible" and there's no way to change the default currently.

[#2]

You do know if you type in a planned start or completion date, it changes the constraint, right?

[#3]

hmm that doesn't work for me. i have a sample training project i opened in April 2018. the planned start date of that project defaults to April 25 2018.

when i try to change it to tomorrow, i get the following error:

Please make sure that your tasks are planned to start and complete on or after the project start date.

[#4]

If you have tasks in a project that are hard coded to start before the desired planned start date of the project, you will get an error. Of course, that task can't start before the project starts and an error should be expected.

This is why hard coded dates are troublesome and cause a lot of problems. They do not flow with the rest of the project because the dates are fixed.

Our organisation's rule is if a task absolutely must start and/or finish on a specific date that will not budge, and you cannot start it early or late, use a "Must" constraint, like in the case of a meeting or an event.

If you have a task that meets this requirement, all that needs to be done is to manually enter that date in either the Planned Start Date or the Planned Completion Date field and the constraint will automatically change.

You can set one of 2 default constraints by going into Setup>Project Preferences>Tasks & Issues and selecting either "Based on the Project Planned Date" which sets the default constraint to ASAP or selecting "Today" which sets the constraint to "Start No Earlier Than (today)". 

We use the latter so it doesn't make tasks look like they were supposed to start when the project started if there's no predecessor. If you put the task in today, chances are it shouldn't have started earlier than today.

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[#5]

Tagging on to this - It would be helpful to have the option of setting task constraint defaults at project level.  Most projects are based on "as soon  as possible", however, in certain projects, it is annoying to have to set the constraint manually every time I add a task that needs a specific start and end date  - OR optionally, fill in a duration to account for the time between the start and end dates.

Either way, it is inefficient and cumbersome and means that only those users familiar with constraints and durations are able add tasks to those specific projects, which is limited to just a few people. 

[#6]

I think I submitted that idea years ago. Something like this:

Set the constraint default in the project settings. If the default is ASAP, you can type in a complete date manually and instead of the constraint changing to "Must Finish On", the duration changes to accomodate the finish date you typed in.

It's a simple bit of maths that would be needed to calculate the duration. Cuurently, the user has to calculate the duration based on Start date time of day, weekends, holidays, time zones, etc. (It's a bit of a pain).

Start dates would have to behave differently because they are affected by predecessors.