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Converting Issue to Task Only

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Level 3
Hello Everyone, I am starting to experiment with converting issues to tasks-only rather than projects if it is a simple one-off. However I seem to struggle with changing the due date each time. It always takes some jockeying (which defeats the purpose of trying to make it quicker). For instance if the request comes in on January 5th, for some reason it always wants to default the due date to the next day (Jan 6th) or maybe it's the same day. Either way I have a hard time changing the date to 2 weeks out for instance. It will give me an error and say "you cannot change the date beyond the planned completion date of_______" However I never planned that aforementioned date to begin with. Any streamlining tricks for tasks-only anyone can give me for dates? Thank you in advance, Mike Mike Marando Excelsior College
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Level 10
I just talked to someone else about this. Why are you choosing to go this route instead of leaving it as an issue? From what the other person says, the problem stems from the project you put it into (probably tied to project start date?) and our practice is never to convert to a task if we can leave it as an issue, so we just have never run across this problem. -skye

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Level 10
Our Creative Services team has WF Request intake process and on this project, once we review the issue/request we 1) close out as cannot be completed 2) convert to a task (if meets our criteria for a shorter initiative - aka speed-desk) or 3) convert to a project using our Creative Services templates. Converting to tasks does present date issues. Like Skye relayed, we have found it is tied to the project start date (of the project where you are adding the task). It is also determine by your issue completion date - do you have one? Also, when you convert your issue to a task, there is a box that states "Keep planned completion date". If you try to convert an issue to a task with no planned completion date, or a planned completion date prior to the project - then your task will have the start date of the project where the task now resides. Marie Kelly The MetroHealth System

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Level 3
Hi Marie, Thank you for your help! Yes it is the planned completion date where I am getting the issue. When I convert to a task (and I am not putting the task into another project, it is just a stand-alone task, but it does live in the marketing/creative services request queue, which is essentially a project), i have to jockey it around to get a true due date. I keep getting the error "you cannot plan a date past the project planned completion date". I think I may experiment with the issues a little more, first of all it is less steps, I can just assign the person and change the date and that's it. I just want to see how that looks on dashboards and reports. Thanks Again! Mike Mike Marando Excelsior College

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Level 3
Hi Mike: We always convert our issues to either tasks or projects. And we always add a task to a project. But we maintain a monthly "catch-all" project that we add the stand-alone tasks into. When we convert the issue and add the resultant task into the project, we specify start dates and duration in the task. If it extends beyond the end of the monthly catch-all complete dates, we move it into the next month's and so on. We also have a number of other catch-all projects, that are annual and which we use to contain various one-off tasks that pop up front time to time. For example, we will have various website maintenance work e.g FY18 Find a Specialist. Each time someone on that specialist team changes, we get the request, create a task and add it to that specific project. At any given time, we can easily view activity to date, costs etc. etc. Plus wth all of those type of projects we can see exactly what kind and amount of resources have been utilized. To us, having an issue floating around without being able to easily categorize it for analysis or searching can be more cumbersome than creating the task. Bill Gattinger ATB Financial Edmonton AB wgattinger@atb.com

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Level 3
Hi Bill, That makes sense as well, having one parent project and pulling in tasks to said project. I can make one for web, one for email blasts, print, etc. And like you said reporting may be easier. These are all great suggestions, I will have to test them to see what is best for our workflow. Thanks again Mike Mike Marando Excelsior College

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Level 7
Hey Mike, You've got some great responses from the community here, though you may want to check what the project's Schedule From date is (your request queue). It sounds like it's not scheduled from Start Date, but rather the Completion Date, which is why you're getting that error. Here's a screenshot from my instance on where you would adjust it. On a request queue, start and completion dates don't typically matter as much as on an actual project, though Workfront still sees it as a project object, so you still need to have them. I hope this helps pinpoint the issue! Thanks, Dustin Martin Tier 2 Assigned Support Engineer Workfront