Default time on project due dates?

[JillAc]

Hi I am pretty sure that just a few weeks ago when I would create a new project the due date would default to 5:00 PM. Now when I create a project it is putting in the time it is right now no matter what the date I'm choosing. Has something changed? Am I crazy? Is there a way to get new projects created from a template to default to a certain time?

[skyehansen]

We go by Start Date on projects and as far as I know the start date has always been today's date + whatever time it is at the moment. I did notice a while ago that one of the templates seemed a bit corrupted in that some of the tasks were starting and stopping at weird times, considering our durations are all usually 1 day. You would think that if the project start time was 9AM (our scheduled start time) then anything that has a 1 day duration and is set to ASAP should start and stop on the same day but this was not the case. This was a while ago but I think I really just had to study the template tasks very carefully and set all the durations and task start and end days as well as possible and this appears to have ironed out the problem but... who knows, really. Let's just say it's been a while since users have commented on wonky times.

[JillAc]

I mentioned it in our morning meeting and a few people spoke up to complain how annoying it is the assumption that every project is going to start NOW this minute, even if you choose a date in the future. That a project doesn't start at 9AM is just weird.

So now I'm trying to figure out how to get the time to show in the Due Date column of a report or a View so that I can see which projects are all screwed up because the first task starts at 4:59PM or ends at 9:00AM throwing everything off. I can't find any documentation on how to do this.

Thanks

[skyehansen]

are you talking about your column's advanced options? Under field format? Or something else?

[JillAc]

OMG I don't know what I was looking at but the drop down didn't include the time I swear I'm not crazy I looked at this exactly and it only had the options without the time. And now I just looked at it again and it's tere. WHY does this always happen to me. I can't retrace my steps to figure out what I was doing. But yes, that is the answer. Sheesh. Thank you, Happy new year.

(I wonder if I chose a date field to try to change that was from a custom form instead a system field and that's why I didn't have time options)

[jrieth]

So not sure if this is relevant to your issue, but here's what I've found.

Every project has a schedule, and times are based on the computer time zone relative to the project schedule. We have project managers in 6 time zones, so we have 6 project schedules defined, all of which start at 08:00 AM and end at 05:00 PM, with a 1-hour break, and a work day of 8 hours in project preferences. When I create a project, I select the project schedule corresponding to the time zone of the assigned project manager, so that when they enter a 1-day task starting at 08:00 AM, it will start and end on the same day. At project creation, I start the project at 08:00 AM my time relative to the project schedule: I'm in PST, so if the project schedule is EST, I start the project at 05:00 AM. Ditto with tasks that I add to that project - 5 AM start. If I entered an 8:00 AM start on a 1-day task on project with an EST schedule, it would actually start at 11:00 AM and end the next day. ~Jeff

[nryan2]

Hi Jill,

We use Planned Start Date on our projects but we are seeing the same thing. The time defaults to NOW when we create a project from a template instead of the start of our workday which is 8:00 am. I don't know when this started happening but it was relatively recently and it is a big annoyance to our project managers.

[Anna_Asatryan]

Hi All,

I wanted to jump in here and let you know that we are working on correcting the behaviour where the time defaults to now instead of the beginning time of the schedule.

We are currently working on it, so the fix should be available in the coming weeks. I will let you know when it's ready to be tested in preview.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

Anna Asatryan,

Product Manager

[Heather_Kulbacki]

Like Skye, we also schedule from project start and the default planned start date/time has always been today's date + whatever time it is at the moment.

We now have Fusion creating projects from issues for us and in the module that creates the project I set the planned start date to today's date and 8:00AM

[JimBr1]

I have Fusion creating tasks from Sales Orders which I then convert to projects... Since we cover multiple time zone we build a 'new project' scenario that that looks at the time zone of the project owner and then adjusts the project schedule to match their time zone.....you could prob mod your senario to have the planned start be in the time zone of the P Owner

[RandyRoberts]

We have users in 6 different time zones. I have a Fusion automation the sets the project schedule to the owners schedule. It can be changed later if need be.