Durations

[KarenRu]

Hi All, Something wonky happened to all my project templates. All the durations seemed to have switched from whole numbers to decimals. i.e- task duration- went from 1 day to 1.14 days task duration - went from 5 days to 5.44 days etc, etc does anyone know how/why this happened? tks Karen

[EricLu2]

That happened to us, too. I don’t know what WorkFront did behind the scenes, but it happened to certain projects, too. A complete mystery. We just went in and fixed it all. (rant) I didn’t bother to open a ticket on this because: 1) I have experience opening tickets and think I can reliably predict how WorkFront Tech Support would react; 2) I would open the ticket; 3) WorkFront Tech Support Level 1 would look at it; 4) They would want to screen share so I can show it to them; 5) They would want me to shoot a movie and upload it; 6) They’d want me to authorize them to access my instance; 7) They would escalate it; 8) They would say they can’t reproduce the error and can’t find anything in the logs that would cause the problem. Maybe I need to look at permissions and see who might have logged in and made such a change. They would give the coup de grace and say it is working as designed; (end rant) Sad but true. Eric

[KarenRu]

Oh darn! I was hoping that wouldn't be the case!!!! I totally understand the rant below- in my short term as a customer- I've already experienced the same sequence of events..... Thanks for confirming I'm not crazy! Karen ________________________________

[EricLu2]

Having had a chance to sleep since my rant in this thread, I think I would be remiss if I didn't compliment Heather Clements in the Tech Support area. I have been fortunate enough to work with her a few times on some tough issues. She always seemed excited to get an interesting challenge. The key thing she does that really differentiates her is she acknowledges the challenges that exist (she doesn't deny them) but them moves on to how we can make the best of it and get done what we need to do. That sense of "yeah, there are challenges, how will we prevail?" is irresistible. Good on you, Heather. Sometimes getting the right Tech Support person makes all the difference. Eric

[KatherineHa1]

First Eric - I agree with your statements on Heather! She rocks. She's always responsive, and helpful - and doesnt jump to the 'working by design' line. We stress when she goes on vacation ;) Secondly, are you saying you had to manually go into each of your templates and adjust the duration/PH task by task? We have 100s of templates, yikes.

[EricLu2]

Egads, woman, manually adjusting the templates is definitely NOT scalable. I’d open a ticket. Send me the ticket number, I’ll join the party with a ticket of my own. Thanks, Eric

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi Katherine and Eric. You might consider our Sync Template AtApp for this one. It lets you synchronize Workfront Tempate changes to the matching Projects that were created upon the Template -- eg durations, assignments, predecessors, new Tasks, etc. -- you pick the options you care about. We developed it to help clients Jump In Sooner (without fear that their Templates were not yet perfect), since it allows continuous improvement as business changes. Regards, Doug

[NateBa]

Eric and Kathy, Thanks for the feedback, and for the shoutout to Heather. I've passed both along to her boss. I love hearing about people who are doing awesome at their job here at Workfront. We're always working to make things better for you. I promise. In Reply to Lucas Eric, MPM:

Having had a chance to sleep since my rant in this thread, I think I would be remiss if I didn't compliment Heather Clements in the Tech Support area. I have been fortunate enough to work with her a few times on some tough issues. She always seemed excited to get an interesting challenge. The key thing she does that really differentiates her is she acknowledges the challenges that exist (she doesn't deny them) but them moves on to how we can make the best of it and get done what we need to do. That sense of "yeah, there are challenges, how will we prevail?" is irresistible. Good on you, Heather. Sometimes getting the right Tech Support person makes all the difference. Eric

-Nate Bagley --- Workfront Community Manager - Work Smart, Work Happy Message me directly at:

[EricLu2]

Thanks, Doug. Does it help recalculate the durations in the templates? It certainly helps propagate changes from templates to projects. Does it help update templates? Thanks, Eric

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Correct -- the updates are Template to Project, Eric. To (for example) change TemplateTask durations, I'd suggest either using Bulk Updates, or our Excel Updater , since Templates are among the objects the latter supports. Regards, Doug

[KatherineHa1]

Actually it looks like our templates weren't impacted. Whew.

[EXP_-_AdamMi]

Hello Karen, My name is Adam and I am a Tier 2 Support Engineer with Workfront. Thank you for your feedback on your past experiences and I am sorry to hear that they have not all been positive. We do strive to make things easy and pain free for you and appreciate all that you do in helping to troubleshoot issues. When durations are shown as deciamals on a template the cause is the schedule attached to the template has more hours than the Typical Hours per Work Day setting under Setup. ie. On the template I have Schedule A attached. Schedule A is 9am - 5pm Monday - Friday so an 8 hour day. In Setup under Project Preferences > Project > Timeline > Typical Hours per Work Day there is an entry of 7 hours. This will cause the duration of the template tasks to show with deciamals. So a 1 day duration would show as 1.14 days since to complete the 8 hour duration in a 7 hour work day it would take 1 whole day plus .14 of the next day. Please check the Typical Hours per Work Day setting and this should resolve the issue you are seeing with deciamals on the template task durations. Please let me know if you run into anything else on this. Thanks again, ADAM MILLET Assigned Support Engineer O 801.477. 1234 | M 844.306.4357 "mailto:adammillet@workfront.com" adammillet@workfront.com | "https://www.workfront.com/" www.workfront.com "https://www.workfront.com/contact-us/" target