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October 10, 2016
Question

My calculated completion date is wrong....not

  • October 10, 2016
  • 3 replies
  • 819 views
Okay, I learned something today. I feel compelled to share it, so the Tech Support team doesn't get more questions like mine. I have been notorious for telling Tech Support the calculated completion date is wrong. I have learned that each time, WorkFront was calculating it correctly. Here are the reasons I learned why I think the calculated completion date is wrong, but really isn't: 1) The task was assigned to someone, and that someone has time off in that time period. In this case, WorkFront automagically extends the duration of the task by the number of days the person has off. 2) The task resource is assigned to a calendar that has exceptions in the time period I thought the task should run. WorkFront pushes the duration of the task out, since that resource won't be working those days; 3) The project is assigned to a calendar that has exceptions in the time period...same thing as number two above; 4) Here is the humbling factoid I learned today: There is a setting under Project Preferences, Approvals, Approval Settings. If a task is assigned to an approval workflow, you can pick how many days to automatically add to the task duration to account for the time it takes a task to get through the workflow. As it turns out, ours was set to five days. For tasks that had an approval workflow assigned, we couldn't figure out why every task was five days longer than expected. Well,. we know now. Does anyone know of any other thing that factors into the calculation of a completion date, aside from the obvious Task Constraints and Duration Types? Thanks! Eric
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3 replies

EricLu2Author
October 10, 2016
Oh, I forgot, here is another: The task that has an "incorrect" completion date has a parent with a predecessor relatonship. The dates on that task don't work out the way you think, until you discover that predecessor on the parent task is driving things. :-)
September 8, 2017
Thank you Eric. I spent about 90 minutes today on the problem you had with #4 before I found your fix. I couldn't figure out any search terms to find "approval process durations" on the support site.
September 13, 2017
Not exactly on topic but I was not even aware of the 'settings' for the approvals. We are a 'long time' user (@task) and have not always found/seen subtle changes like this one without tripping over it on the way to figure out how to do something else.... That aside, after reading your post I was concerned that our 'auto add' duration may be too long too and took a look at our config. The duration was set for one day with is fine since we set a 2 day duration to the task to start with (making it in effect a 3 day task). But what caught my eye was this: I do a lot of bulk edits - setting custom forms flags on or off, adding, changing data, etc - basically forcing changes to ripple thru the portfolio, and since 'forever' bulk task edits when the even a single task was in 'pending approval' was PITA. While I know there are other 'blockers' to bulk edits, I'm hoping this one at least reduces the number of edits that say 'you can't do that for a task/project in a pending approval status'..... Jim Brown FujiFilm Medical Systems, USA