Hour entry role updated on historical hour entries

[NickVa1]

Hi WF Community,

Wondering if anyone has run into this issue, and if they know why it occurs?

A user got promoted recently, and thus their role in WF was updated to a new role. When running a historical hours report, we noticed that a number of old hour entries were associated with the user's new role, even though they did not hold that role several months back. This wasn't the case on all of this user's historical hour entries, just some.

We've done a mass Recalculate Finances sweep on a number of projects, and thought that would only update users' cost-per-hour and billing rates on historical hour entries, not job role changes. I tested this in Sandbox and using the Recalculate Finances function didn't update hour entry roles on historical hour entries. Just seeing if this might have been the cause.

Thanks.

Nick

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

You'll want to lean in for this explanation Nick,

We encountered this greasy corner case when delivering our Workfront Merge/Split service.

Although Roles can be percentage based (e.g. Doug is Chief 10%, Cook 20%, and Bottle Washer 70%), they are not Effective Dated, so I suspect what you're seeing is Workfront's falling back to a user's default role when they no longer have that role.

When moving data from one environment to another in a Workfront Merge/Split, it is VERY common to move Tasks that were completed a long time ago (e.g. back when Doug was Potato Peeler 100%), but for which the user no longer has listed among his/her/their roles, whether due to promotion, or (almost as often) some rejig of the way Roles are defined. The trouble is, though, that when we then try to attach such a user back onto that "moved" Task, Workfront's business rules detect that the User (now) lacks the Role needed to perform the Task -- think "skills" -- and rejects the update (e.g. Doug's not qualified to Peel Potatoes. True story).

To work around this as one of our Pre Flight Merge/Split Checks is to add back every historic Role every user ever had (based on a comprehensive Task and Issue report by User / Role), and for each such "historic" Role, zero out the percentage. Doing so (barely) confirms Workfront's Business Rule (e.g. Doug can perform the Potato Peeler Role...but isn't supposed to), and therefor allows the Assignment to be made.

I suggest you do likewise and reinstate the former Role(s) with 0% to the Promoted User in question, then check again and see if the Historic integrity you seek then reappears.

I'm interested to hear how you make out; good luck!

Regards,

Doug

[NickVa1]

Thanks for the great story about Doug the Potato Peeler. I'm going to digest it further and will let you know where we net out.

[ChrisBudgen]

Hi @Nick Valeriote‚ ,

are using the "Assign Job Roles to hour entries manually" feature? If not, this solved a similar issue for us (user got de-assigned from a task, fin re-calc, revenue calculated with primary job-role instead of historically assigned job-role).

Best,

Chris

[NickVa1]

Thanks, Chris. Funny enough we just recently rolled this out.