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Lateness of a Predecessor Task

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Level 3
Hi Workfront Community, Hoping you can help me in trying to figure out a report or dashboard for our PM team and leadership that shows where a task is late that maybe be the predecessor to another task. We are trying to illustrate to our leadership that the lateness of a task relying on a predecessor is not that assignee's fault that their task is late. I know I can do a report on late tasks, but I truly want to highlight the lateness of that predecessor task. Looking forward to any and all feedback. Thanks, Erika Erika Garrett Gulfstream Aerospace
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Level 10
I think this is a tougher question than you would have guessed -- for my specific use case, my group of PMs spend so much time tweaking their project timelines in order to accommodate a late task. e.g. if something starts running late, we adjust the planned start times and remove duration from all downstream tasks. So nothing ever ends up permanently showing as late--so it's tough to get a good historical report. (All our tasks are set to a task constraint of ASAP, and in order to display dates appropriately for everyone else, the late task's planned completion date has to be re-set appropriately) Since that's the case, we eventually went to looking at setting up baselines. This way, we can see all the due dates that the PM initially intended, and compare them to what eventually happened at the end of the project. I think if it's not your PMs' practice to do this amount of tweaking, then it would be a simpler case of showing that a task's handoff date was later than their planned start date, and listing the predecessors in the view. In other words, if you just leave all your dates as-is, you could run a late task report on the actual task and set up your views or filters to highlight the lateness of the predecessor. For filters, you would look at this link (filtering by comparing two fields): https://experience.workfront.com/s/article/Understanding-Common-Uses-of-Text-Mode-37391990#using-tex... For Views, you might format this way: https://experience.workfront.com/s/article/Comparing-Fields-in-Conditional-Formatting-1413809645 You would filter if you just wanted to show late tasks late because of predecessors. You might format your view if you wanted to show all the late tasks but highlight the ones late because of predecessors. (i.e. showing it in context) -skye

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Level 2

I'm still trying to figure out this report myself. Currently, we have a report of all late tasks grouped by Project>Name as of Today so we can address troubled projects, and our view will mark the Actual Completion Date in red if it's later than the planned date. So with a quick glance at the report, we can see what tasks are late as of today and the tasks they affect throughout the project, and when we dive into the actual Jobs, we can see exactly where things went off the rails. Here's the report filters. Grouping is just by Project>Name

And we show these columns in the report:

As for your situation, Skye, your PMs don't need to spend all that time tweaking timelines if your durations don't change. The Planned Completion Date is the schedule/timeline your PMs set. If you show Projected Completion Date, that displays the new expected completion date, given the time the predecessor task was actually completed and the duration of the next tasks. You should only have to tweak things if there's a hard deadline and you're planning by Completion Date instead of Start Date. Chrystal Martin UCLA Extension0690z000007ZhY3AAK.png

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Level 10
thanks, that's exactly our case. There's a few hard deadlines in the project that can't change, so we remove duration from tasks leading up to those in order to keep on track. We don't really use projected dates, since many tasks are not long enough for folks to enter a percent complete, so the projected dates will always show up in varying degrees of frustrating incorrectness. (some folks also just don't make the time to update their tasks) -skye

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Level 10
Hi Erika, I have a similar report I've used for some of our more difficult clients. It shows you tasks that were late and then shows the predecessor (if there was one) and when that predecessor was actually completed. That way you can see how the predecessor might be at fault for the task. Here is the code for the last column if you are interested. displayname=Predecessor Name and Actual Completion Date listdelimiter=
listmethod=nested(predecessors).lists textmode=true type=iterate valueexpression=CONCAT({predecessor}.{name}," - ",{predecessor}.{actualCompletionDate}) valueformat=HTML Anthony Imgrund FCB

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Level 10

HAHAHA! No idea why the screenshot was so small. I've attached it here. Anthony Imgrund FCB0690z000007ZhWhAAK.png

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Level 10
Never put your screen shots in the dryer ��

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Level 3
"... the projected dates will always show up in varying degrees of frustrating incorrectness." - Skye Well said. Wayne Ellyson OH-DAS

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Level 3
We have been so busy I was just now able to apply this textcode and THANK YOU! This was a tremendous plus for our team. I have another question that maybe you can help with. So I am trying to create a column in the same report that states if the predecessor was late and say 'Yes' if late and 'No' if not late. I know I am over thinking it. I was thinking along using the same formula you gave, however I am trying to figure out how to define when to say Yes or No. Hope that makes sense. Erika Garrett