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Task "Can Start" flag and Issue Completion - Workaround?

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Level 2
Currently, if you complete a Task with an oustanding Issue, the Task status changes to "Complete - Pending Issues". Once the Issue is marked Complete, the Task is automatically set to "Complete". This is a really great feature, as it forces you to deal with outstanding issues before moving on with the rest of your Workflow. However, completing Tasks this way does NOT automatically update the "Can Start" flag on successor tasks (the next task in the chain of events). This means the My Work page and other reports will not accurately reflect work that can start. Has anyone else run into this? Is there a workaround that you might suggest?
9 Replies

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Level 10
Hi Jeremy, I just did some testing and I'm running into the same issue you are having. I'd log that as a bug. I can't imagine that it is designed that way.

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Level 2
Hey Anthony, Thanks for confirming that you are also experiencing this issue. I have actually reported this to Workfront, and they're currently indicating that it's "by design". They've admitted that the design is flawed, but are estimating 12 mos minimum before a fix could be implemented because of changes they are currently making to the scheduling architecture. To me, this missing functionality is fairly core to the tool - you essentially cannot use Issues on Tasks and still rely on the Can Start flag. Is anyone else running into this problem?

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Level 10
Wow... that surprises me. It is also annoying as I have several employees that will only accept work requests when it is in the Ready to Start area and this issue messes that up to. You can add a field called Pending Predecessors to a report, but there are two things 1) It will change to False when the task is Complete - Pending Issues, and 2) it only works for a task report. I went to customize My Work to see if I could add that field and you can't. Now I have to decide if I'm going to make this a report I email to them or so place in the tool they need to go tool, which they won't as they love the My Work area. Oh well.

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Level 2
Hey Anthony, If this is functionality that you need, I strongly encourage you to submit a request to Workfront Support yourself, and perhaps even reach out to your Customer Success Manager. The more customers that they hear from on this (or any issue), the higher it will be prioritized. Thanks for the tip on Pending Predecessors. That won't help us here (as you pointed out) but it might be useful elsewhere!

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Level 10
Good Morning, Heard back from my support person. So... if you go to Project Actions and Recalculate time, the Can Start trigger happens and the work request moves to Ready to Start. So at least it isn't "designed" to completely ignored the predecessor. I wrote back to Heather to ask her to look into why it isn't recalculating at night though automatically. We have the setting Recalculate Automatic and On Change and my understanding was that besides doing a change on the project, all projects got recalculated at midnight Salt Lake City time anyways. So even if the completion of an issue isn't considered a "change" on the project level, I would think that overnight recalculation would fix the issue. I'll let you know what Heather says about that. :)

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Level 2
Thanks, Anthony. We were also informed that the overnight recalculation should catch this. Our struggle is that we move to fast to wait for an overnight recalc. We often have work impacted by this that needs to be turned around in a few hours...waiting overnight for the system to correct itself just isn't an option. For now we have made the unfortunate decision to stop using Issues (except for requests queues). Still interested in hearing what you find out on your end.

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Level 10
Hi Jeremy. Since the overnight recalcs are not frequent enough for your fast-paced workflow, I invite you to consider our Recalc Helper (see video), which you can easily embed right into a dashboard within Workfront. Regards, Doug

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Level 10
Or maybe only put issues on the project level. Issues there don't affect the Can Start on a task.

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Level 10
Thanks for highlighting this Jeremy. I hadn't enountered this yet, but am sure to at some time. This is one of the best things about the community site....this would never be documented or publicised otherwise!