Planned Dates Don't Calculate

[JillAc]

Every now and then, for reasons that are unclear, my dates don't calculate. In this case it skips Thursday. If I make the In Market Date Feb 6, the Mail Date switches to Friday Jan 24. The rest of the plan is on schedule and working perfectly right up until the second to last task. There is nothing marked done, it doesn't start until next week, all constraints are ASAP. I am going out of my mind. Not sure if the screenshot will come through of the problem rows. Any magic wands? Jill Ackerman

[KimRi1]

Your Mail Date is a predecessor to line 34 so it's going to calculate on line 34, not your in Market Date. Also, your In Market Date is set up to Must Finish On so that could be an issue as well. However, I do run into this every once in a while. I go up to the top right of the project, select Project Actions and then Recalculate Timeline. Sometimes it still doesn't work and I find there's some wonky setting in the task somewhere. Wonky being a very technical term. :-> Good luck! Kim Ringelstetter CUNA Mutual Group

[JillAc]

Hi I neglected to mention that I use templates that calculate to the Completion Date --- so there are no constraints anywhere earlier in the project and the first task due date should calculate backwards and tell me when I need to start this project in order to finish by Row 40. I did recalculate several times, and also deleted the project and started from scratch, to find the same problem. No matter how much I change previous durations, it always skips Jan 23. When I use the same template with a different final Must Finish On date a month later, it works perfectly. For some reason it just skips Jan 23. I did finally solve the problem by setting the very first task in the critical path as Must Start On, and one day later than how WF calculates the planned start date using ASAP, so that's the workaround. It's so weird. In 2019 this same thing happened to me for projects in November and I thought it was Thanksgiving vacation dates giving me a problem, but this year there is no time off on or around Jan 23.

[Heather_Kulbacki]

I think the issue is the Must Finish On set to 2/5 with duration of 9 days. If you want it to start on 1/23 and still finish on 2/5, that's 10 days.

[JillAc]

I thought of that too. When I change it to 10 days, Row 39 doesn't budge, it stays on Jan 22, same as 9 days. When I change Row 39 to 8 days it goes to Friday Jan 24! When I change it to 11 days Row 39 goes to Jan 21 I think it's something to do with the Start Date of the Project. I've seen this a couple times before -- even though the project is planned from Completion Date with no constraints because I want Workfront to tell me when I need to launch this project, somehow the start date gets stuck and so the final planned dates don't calculate right. What's weird is that even when I make a brand new project with the same dates, it makes the same glitch on Row 39. If I make a new project with a different final due date, it all works fine. I'm blaming the martians who interfere with our satellites. :) Jill Ackerman

[Heather_Kulbacki]

For a scheduled from completion date project, line 39 should be set to As Late As Possible instead of As Soon As Possible , to push it out to start just before line 40 since 40 is dependent on 39. Line 39 is currently basing it's date to start as soon as it can after line 34, which I'm guessing is set to finish on 1/21

[JillAc]

Hi I tried that too! Still doesn't work, Row 39 is still stuck on Wed Jan 22. Row 34 is due Jan 21 on this plan. But if it was calculating properly it would be Jan 22 and all the due dates would be one day later so that we wouldn't lose that last Thursday. I've gone line by line and it sets the due dates correctly except this one task.

[jrieth]

Greetings, I too have been frustrated by the loss of a single day. Here are some things I always check, most of which I know you know: Resource time off during period in question? Company holiday during period in question? Task start and end time of task align with work time in calendar? Your time zone same as time zone (schedule) of project? In my experience, if my computer is set to PST, and the project schedule is set to EST, whether by intent or default, then if I enter a start time of 08:00 AM, that will start the task at 11:00 AM "project time," and the task finish will push a day. When troubleshooting, enforcing the predecessor will sometimes force an error that reveals the issue. ~Jeff Jeff Rieth

[chrisjuno456]

Make sure that your Project Timeline Calculations (Settings > Project Preferences > Projects) and your Schedule are congruent with each other. Earlier this year we were having trouble with timeline calculations and found that the schedule did not align with the Timeline Calculations numbers and it was throwing everything off. Chris Jackson CheckMark

[JillAc]

Mine are all correctly aligned, and still have the problem. I just loaded in about 70 projects for 2020 and I had this issue on about 4-5 of them that all had final due dates on or around dates that are being suppressed due to the days off calendar (Memorial Day, Thanksgiving) but not all of them and not consistently. This happened to me this year as well, I couldn't properly calculate a timeline that had to skip Thanksgiving. This is definitely a bug and I'm going to report it when I have some time.