tracking PTO impact on project schedules

[KristenS_WF]

Hi All,

We bulk upload the majority of our learning product projects at the beginning of the year.  When various assignees add PTO to their calendars after the projects are loaded, it's necessary to recalculate timelines to reflect the PTO (our projects use the 'Consider user time off in task durations' setting).  I recently created a Fusion scenario that recalculates the timelines for active projects in our learning portfolios; that's working fine thus far.

My counterpart (who works with our creative projects) is thinking of adopting the automation for his portfolios, but he asked if a report could be generated to reflect what projects are impacted (and what the impact on the schedule is).

I don't see an obvious way of doing this.  We do track Planned Completion Date for the Project object in our Updates Feeds.  I created a Journal Entry report, and it tracks changes to the field that result from updates to the projects (e.g., when a task duration changes, causing the project's Planned Completion Date to change).  It does not reflect when the field changes due to a recalculation from added PTO (or presumably an added holiday/exception, if one is created later in the year).

The closest thing I can get is to compare when the Planned Completion Date for the most recent journal entry record does not match the current Planned Completion Date for the project (see the screenshot for my sample project).  However, I'm unsure how to limit the report to the most recent entry, and the report only identifies the discrepancy (not the source--specific user PTO, holiday, etc.).

Has anyone come up with a way to track new PTO records and their impact on project schedules?  Thanks.

[Richard_Le_ · Accepted solution]

Hi Kristen,

Have you considered using a Baseline report instead? 

Ordinarily (but depending on your configuration) a project baseline will be created when it is first set to a current status, therefore taking a "snapshot" of the project timeline. You can also create additional baselines manually as you see fit. Using a baseline report you will be able to compare the planned completion date of the original baselined project plan against the latest planned completion date. 

You could even take this a step further and create a baseline task report to identify which specific tasks in your project changed. 

You can read more on baselines here. There's also an example of how to report on the variances across a baseline here, this talks to comparing changes in duration and planned work but the same conceps apply to planned completion dates.

Best Regards,

Rich.

[KristenS_WF]

Thanks, Rich!  I'll take a look (particularly at reporting on variances).

I see there are Fusion templates available for baseline creation on status change and on a weekly basis.  I'm thinking I might be able to adapt the former to develop a scenario that creates a baseline when the project planned completion date changes (we've got a few hundred projects active at any given moment, so manual baseline creation is probably not feasible).

Thank you again!