Help on a report for projects that have not had any activity within the past week

[BrookeSt1]

Looking to create a report which will show any active project which has not had activity within the past week.  Specifically, if no tasks have been updated/completed, no comments added, no documents added, or proofs reviewed/approved.  This would help alert the team on whcih projects are not making any progress.   Does anyone know if there are filters that could be applied to a project report to look for lack of activity?

[Madalyn_Destafney]

My first thought is to use a journal entry report instead of a project report. JE reports pull certain activity in objects, and you could filter XYZ projects into your report with [this week] activity timeframe filters and basically pull projects that HAVEN’T met the filters (whereas people usually use JE when seeking to see when activity has happened). Can look into this more on Monday!

[RandyRoberts · Accepted solution]

Here's how I do it:

displayname=Days Untouched
styledef.case.0.comparison.icon=false
styledef.case.0.comparison.leftmethod=lastUpdateDate
styledef.case.0.comparison.lefttext=lastUpdateDate
styledef.case.0.comparison.operator=notnull
styledef.case.0.comparison.operatortype=date
styledef.case.0.comparison.righttext=
styledef.case.0.comparison.trueproperty.0.name=fontstyle
styledef.case.0.comparison.trueproperty.0.value=bold
styledef.case.0.comparison.truetext=
textmode=true
valueexpression=ROUND(DATEDIFF({lastUpdateDate},$$TODAY),0)
valueformat=HTML

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[Lyndsy-Denk]

Fabulous! I applied this to one of our views in the Projects area and have only one piece of feedback: Your valueexpression delivers a negative number, so I swapped the expression to read:

valueexpression=ROUND(DATEDIFF($$TODAY,{lastUpdateDate}),0)

[RandyRoberts]

Thanks @Lyndsy-Denk, that's great. I've been meaning to fix that for ages and it just kept slipping my mind. Much easier to copy and paste yours!

[BrookeSt1]

Thank you Randy, this was a good solve!  I always thought the "Last update" fields meant the latest comments on the Updates tab, not all of the system updates within a project. 

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi @BrookeSt1,

In addition to the handy bolding that @RandyRoberts offered, you could also filter the report to only those projects whose Last Update Date is less than $$TODAY-7d (i.e. haven't been updated in at least a week), and/or add and default to a column chart to the report that groups by the Last Update Date (e.g. by month), which would then separate them into separate piles of varying inactivity for further analysis (i.e. move it or lose it), in a fashion similar to this One Chart To Role Them All post.

Regards,

Doug

[BrookeSt1]

Thanks Doug.  That filter was helpful.

[skyehansen]

I think it's worth drilling down on some of your particular needs. I'm just embarking on this journey myself, so here are some brief notes I've made.

Here are some actions that update a project's "last update date":

• task addition and deletion
• change to project custom form
• change to task status
• upload file to project
• comments at the project level

Here are some actions that do not update the project's last update date.

• change to task fields (e.g. task description)
• upload file to task
• comments at the task level

So to your point, as long as you define lack of activity as the former, then that column stands. If your users may tweak the project with the latter set of actions (or others), you may have some false positives on your report unless you specifically filter for these actions as well.