Task Durations All Wrong

[ThomasWh1]

I've been having an issues with all my task durations for a couple weeks now. When I start a new project schedule using one of my templates the durations are fine as I'm building the schedule, but as soon as I start adding resources to the tasks, all the durations go out of wack. For instance I'll have a task that is supposed to take a duration of one day, and it will end up starting on a Tuesday and completing on a Wednesday. Also the parent tasks will go from 5 days to 5.11 days or something similar. If i'm not mistaken, this only started happening after a new build was pushed out by WF. Anyone have a clue to what is going on? I've tried adjusting the default calendar and the typical hours per work day, but no luck so far. Help, it's driving me and my schedules crazy. Thanks. Thomas

[LauraRa]

Hi Thomas, Did you already check your project settings? Under "Edit project" there is an option to consider user time off and user schedules. Maybe you can change that to "ignore user time-off"? If that doesn't help, I think you need to dive into the individual schedules of your users within their settings. It could be that users chose availability settings or schedules which decreases their working time for WF-projects. I added a screenshot for you, the schedules and timetables chosen there have influence on how you can schedule your tasks. Best regards, Laura PS: My company is still struggling to get the names displayed correctly as we use single-sign on, therefore I am displayed here as Jarrod. Jarrod Taylor

[DavePa1]

Thomas, I had a similar problem. We diagnosed as the Duration Type for the task. If you set it to Simple rather than Calculated, the numbers behave normally. I hope this solves your problem. And of course, for an active project, you'll have to change this for each task. It can be set on a template to relieve future grief. Dave Dave Parker Seed Company

[EXP_-_DustinMa]

Hi Thomas, This is typically caused by a few areas working together. 1) You're on the right track with "Typical Work Hours per Work Day" in Setup. But, 2) the Assignee's schedule will also impact this, and your setting for "When multiple users are assigned to a task, use the schedule of the..." Primary Assignment / Project. If you set it to Primary Assignment, it'll go off the task owner's schedule. If you set it to Project, it'll go off the project's schedule... and this again is only for cases like "1st Review" where there are more than 1 assignees. 3) Timezone. If you're in California (PST) and the task owner (we'll say Tania for example) is in Colorado, you're most likely going to have a 1h difference in schedules. (9-5, she's going to start an hour earlier than you, and end an hour earlier than you.) If your task is set to start Mon Oct 14th at 9am based on your timezone, that's 10am her timezone. 1 day duration assumes 9am-5pm PST, her time that's 10am-5pm Day 1, and 9am-10am Day 2.(assuming typical work hour per day is 8 hours.) That's where you'll get the .## days from. I hope this helps clear things up a bit! Good luck and thanks, Dustin Martin Assigned Support Engineer Workfront

[ThomasWh1]

Thanks everyone for all the ideas and tips. I believe the issue is solved now. It turns out that all my workers were set to use the default schedule 9-5, but all my project templates were using an updated schedule (9-6) that I made for my team. I went in and changed all my workers to my team schedule and so far that seems to have settled the issue. Prior to the problems starting I believe both schedules shared the same hours, so that's why the problem wasn't evident. We have other teams sharing schedules at the company, so someone must've went in and changed the hours on the default schedule, so that they were no longer identical. Thanks! Thomas White

[RochelleWe]

Thomas, Make sure you are using SIMPLE and not EFFORT-DRIVEN durations. Dr. Rochelle L. Webb, CSM Sr. Project Manager, Project Management Office MHMR Tarrant County Ft. Worth, Texas 817-569-4146