time value on planned completion date

[catherineh70969]

Our creative team noticed that a time value is associated with Planned Completion dates within Home, and that Tasks are flagged as late based upon that time setting. We work by COB at the due date time unless otherwise noted. Is there a way to set this as a system default for tasks? Catherine Hayes The Channel Company

[EXP_-_DustinMa]

Hi Catherine, You'll want to make sure 3 pieces of info line up. 1) Global timeline preferences for projects: 2) Next you'll want to make sure the schedule they have on their profile matches the work day you use. Example below shows an 8 hour work day: 3) Make sure that the task has a duration of 1 day, or if you base percent complete off percentages, 8 hours. (Or, use full days and 8 hours per day for planned hours, assuming you stick with the system default of 8 hours per day for global project preferences in part 1 at the top of this message.) Otherwise you'll run into issues where a task has say .75 day duration and 6 hours. Well, using my settings for example, a task would start at 8am and finish at 3pm, leaving 2 additional hours for the work day, and the next task would start at 3pm, and assuming it is a 1 day 8 hour duration task, would end at 3pm the following business day (or work day based on your schedule.) I hope this helps! Thanks, Dustin Martin Assigned Support Engineer Workfront

[CameronHo]

I have the same question as OP on this issue. Our group operates with date based deadlines for all assigned tasks. If a member of our team completes a task on the planned completion date we want that task to show up as being completed on time. We then report on completed tasks progress status (whether task was completed Late or On Time). With the current settings in Workfront some tasks that were completed on the planned completion date show as late because they are completed after the time associated with the planned completion date. Is it possible to set a system default so all tasks have a Planned Completion Date timestamp of 11:59:59PM? Cameron Howitt

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi Cameron, I suspect that many business would agree with yours that "same day = on time", but since Planned Completion Dates and Schedules are all driven down to the minute, Late Means Late, from a Workfront perspective. Given that reality, here are a few options you might consider: Fiddle with your Schedules, Hours Per Day, and FTEs so that "midnight" is the default (not recommended) By convention, have everyone enter "11:59:59 PM" on the Planned Completion Dates (e.g. for Must Finish On's)...eww Add colorization conventions on reports to highlight such situations (e.g. Late but with a green background = same day) Spurn the built in "Late" calculations and instead roll your own, more forgiving, calculated custom parameter Leverage our "http://store.atappstore.com/product/ubercalc/">UberCalc solution to correct the problem in the background (e.g. set Planned Completion Datetime = Actual Completion Datetime, where the days are the same, thereby tricking the built in definition back to On Time Regards, Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads

[VicAl]

I haven't tried it, but would this setting under setup help? I'm not sure if it sets the Planned Completion Date to the exact time and thus negates the Late flag, but might be worth a try. Another option I would use would be what Doug mentioned. Set your own calculated flag or colorization on your report (or whatever View your using to display these).

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Excellent thought, Vic. The second radio option would effectively mean "I hit my plan date" and thereby neatly solve the hours discrepancy that's causing the Late situation (from using the first radio option). Note, though, that with that second radio option on, a Task finished days later would also (upon saying "Complete") have its Actual Completion date then be backdated to the original Planned Completion Date, which seems disingenuous, and might warrant tracking down last update vs actual completion date auditing. So...choose yer poison: we have a wide assortment. Regards, Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads

[VicAl]

Yes absolutely. Good point. That's actually the reason we don't use that setting. We want our PM's to willingly and knowingly change that Planned Completion Date so they're fully in tune with their project. But everyone has different needs and processes.

[Heather_Kulbacki]

Where our team is losing their minds is not after a task is complete and it shows as late, but on Home. In the Home task list, the whole task turns red if they are a minute late and the date/time show in red in the right pane. One item that seems to usually help is when setting up the project, giving the project an early morning start time, right under the start date.I usually do 7am. Many of our PMs set the start date, but forget to touch the time and it carries over from the request. If it's some off time in the middle of the day, all the tasks get that same start/completion time.

[catherineh70969]

Thanks for the suggestion @Heather Kulbacki Our creative team has the exact same issue with items flagged in red within Home for this reason . We'll give this a try. Catherine Hayes The Channel Company

[AnthonyIm]

We train our employees to make sure their projects start at 9am (which is the start time in our schedules). Since a 1 day duration is 8 hours in our system, if the start time is 11am for the project and the first task is 1 day duration, the timing is 12/3 11am to 12/4 11am. And then the whole project is off by two hours. If the start time is 9am, it looks like 12/3 9am to 12/3 5pm. Anthony Imgrund FCB

[SarahLe1]

@Dustin Martin Or, Workfront could allow us to choose not to display the time due stamp on tasks in Home. The timestamp adds such a layer of complexity that users start to not pay attention to the time it's due, negating the entire idea of having a time that the task is due displayed. I see this idea all over the Idea Exchange. Is it being discussed internally within WF? Sarah Lemoncelli

[EXP_-_DustinMa]

Hi Sarah, I've heard that ask a few times. While we don't display the timestamp on templates, the issue comes down to generics, schedules, exceptions, time zones, all sorts of factors go into play here. I work directly with a small group of customers, so my exposure to questions like this isn't as broad as say someone on our Tier 1 support team, or our Escalations team, but is limited to the customers I've worked with in the past, and the customers I'm currently assigned as their support engineer. That said, I think it would be a great option to enable at a project level, as it would make general planning much quicker and easier, when you don't have to account for a lot of the variables that go into planning a project, so I'd highly recommend promoting the ideas on the idea exchange. Once they hit 45 votes, the product management team is notified and they respond pretty quickly on whether or not makes business sense for us to implement. Internally, I've not heard anything about it in quite some time, so I'm not personally aware of it being on any roadmap that we have planned. Thanks! Dustin Martin Assigned Support Engineer Workfront

[ChristineBa]

We set up our calendar very simply for 9-5 as the workday, 8 hours. We set ALL of our projects to have a planned start time of 9 am. this allows us to utilize the duration feature effectively. We also train team members to look at planned dates and not commit dates. One must remember that durations for tasks that follow are calculated based on the time and day the predecessor task is planned to complete. For us, durations and due time are as follows: 0.125d 10 am or 1 hour 0.25d 11 am or 2 hours 0.375d noon or 3 hours 0.5d 1 pm or 4 hours 0.625d 2 pm or 5 hours 0.75d 3 pm or 6 hours 0.875d 4 pm or 7 hours 1.0d 5pm or 8 hours Here's an example of how three dependent tasks due in one day might look: task 1, duration 0.5d task 2, duration 0.25d, predecessor task 1 (fs) task 3, duration 0.25, predecessor task 2 (fs) For us, we only have one calendar set up for EST only, so it's not difficult. I imagine it gets harder if you have multiple time zones. The big irritation for me, is that if I set the durations properly at the template level, when I create a project, it reduces any time that I entered as three numbers post decimal to two. So it calculates my 0.125 as 0.12, and then the task is due at an odd time and screws up my whole schedule again. My projects should keep the integrity of due time I entered in the template. It's aggravating. Christine Barrera Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae)

[EXP_-_DustinMa]

Hi Christine, I think that's a great idea. The issue you're running into with us dropping the 3rd decimal value is because we round to the nearest hundredth for pretty much all fields. Now, you can get around this in reports or views with text mode, but that's something that's outside the scope of what I can help with here, and would recommend reaching out to our support team. Good luck with your project planning! Dustin Martin Assigned Support Engineer Workfront

[MarisolCa]

Is there a way to set the project to default to a pre-set time? We're having an issue with projects being created but the time is not adjusted as the project is made, and it currently defaults to random times throughout the day. We can have a task that is due today and have a due time of 10:21AM and if the designer has not got it done by then, then it shows as late. Can we default our task/project due dates to EOD of the workday? Thank you MarisolCamposCreative

[MarisolCa]

Sorry, our task/project due TIMES to EOD. MarisolCamposCreative