Actual Hours, Total Hours, and Sorting by Hours?

[MartyGa]

I've been asked to do up some reporting showing where the bulk of our time as being dedicated. There are a lot of hours fields at the project level, and I thought I understood them, but ran across a difference I dont get. In most projects, ACTUAL HOURS is the same (rounded) as TOTAL HOURS. However, I ran across one project where there is a significant difference (see attached). I cannot understand what this is telling me. Also - I'd like to be able to sort by the total (or is it actual?) hours to show the major time sinks overall, and this month. I cant seem to sort on any of these columns. Any suggestions? thanks. MG

[MartyGa]

Thanks all. This is REALLY misleading in the reporting. The word I got back from our Workfront support person was that it was likely a rounding error, that the system may be rounding BEFORE summing. Yikes, I thought! Where did that programmer go to school? This explanation seems more plausible, though still really annoying! Now if we can only figure out why you can sort on some of these columns but not others.... Cannot sort on Actual Hours This Month, Actual Hours Last three Months, etc. Trying to do some 80/20 and yet again need to export to another tool to do the job. sigh.

[EricLu2]

Hi - I’m wondering if the reason we can’t sort on some fields is because the field is not exclusively a number or a character field. It is a mixed number and character field. One attribute gives you the hours as a real number suffixed by the word “Hours”. I wonder if the technical act of converting a real number to a real with a suffixed character string means their sort algorithm chokes. When you sort numbers as numbers, they are ordered the way you think they should. When you sort numbers as a character, however, they don’t sort out like you want. They come out as: 10 100 105 106 10040 20 2001 20001 30 And so on. Sorting those mixed number/character fields will only work if you put leading zeroes on the number before you suffix the work “Hours”. I suspect no one wants to see: 0010 Hours 0204 Hours 0345 Hours 0467 Hours And so on… Just speculating… Eric

[AdinaPi1]

I did some testing, and it seems like in my case, the Actual Hours is always right, and the Total Hours is wrong. I found this help article as well: https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/225172288-Report-Total-Hours-field-shows-different-r... Recalculating Finance didn't do anything in my case either, the Total and Actual are still mismatched. It seems that Total Hours is a rounded number, but I'm not sure what the purpose is since we report on the actual hours (in .25 hour increments) Am I missing anything?

[EricLu2]

Hi: I would contact Tech Support. Recalculating Finances adjusted my Actual Hours so it matched the rounded Total Hours, the opposite of what you have experienced. Also, your experience doesn’t align with the expected behavior in the help article. I’d phone them up and see if they can figure it out. Thanks! Eric

[MaggieTalierco]

Hi All, I found this thread from last August and Marty's question is exactly what I am looking for. I am not sure if anyone answer his last part to show where the most time sink question. I need to show a report of where top 20 projects with highest actual hours. Can any of the Workfront Genius help me? Thank you! I will be at the Workfront Genius Bar..

[BenettaPe]

I am having trouble getting Workfront to sum - my hours - look at the column heading - those hours are not Sums. I also need to know why the actual hours are all 0's. I have recalculated the timeline and finances on all of my projects. I can dump this into excel and just sum it - but I want to do it using workfront - do you have a solution?