Number of times a date has changed on task or project

[LeahLa1]

Hi everyone!

I hope you are doing well today. We are wanting to track project completion and also user usage within Workfront. I am wanting to build two reports-- one that shows the number of times the planned completion date has been changed on a project, perhaps sorted by the projects with the greatest number of date changes to the least. The second report would be a task report that shows which tasks have had their due dates changed the most, grouped by user. We're wanting to determine if our users are just pushing the due dates out on tasks.

Do you have any suggestions of how to go about this? Ideally I would like a column within the report that shows the number of times the date was changed, either that or the number of changes listed within the grouping header.

Thank you for your help! This community is great!

Leah

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi Leah,

I can offer a few options:

• consider taking a Baseline whenever a Project (or at the extreme, certain Tasks) Planned Completion Dates change, either manually, or using our Create Baselines solution (which can automate such steps)
• by leveraging Workfront's Track Changes (aka auditing) features, you could write a Notes report filtered to retrieve those that include the phrase " Planned Completion Date" (implying it changed), and prompted and/or grouped and sorted by Project, Task, Note Owner Name (i.e. the person who caused the change), and then observing the parenthetic counts at each level to gauge the frequency
• same as previous, but as a Matrix Report, with (for example) row groupings by Project and column groupings by Note Entry Date, to the month (for trending)
• for a more advanced but precise approach, adapt my Targeted Auditing Proof Of Concept to record such edits (or even "count each, as it happens") at the Project and/or Task level

Regards,

Doug

[AnthonyCAANZ]

Hey @Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore 
This is some great information, I am trying to execute your idea number two. I'm just a bit confused, I'm wanting to filter on Projects that have a " {user} has changed the due date" but I can't see which field this would be in the notes report. This is a system-tracked update. I am so close just can't get this last step! Any help would be appreciated. 

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi @AnthonyCAANZ,

When creating such a Notes report, I suggest you search either the "Notes Text" column (for user entered information), and/or the "Audit Text" column (for system generated information). In the case of my idea number two, the latter would apply. Good luck!

Regards,

Doug

[AnthonyCAANZ]

Thanks Doug for the quick response, Still can't get it right but I'll keep trying!