The definition of Current tasks should be in-progress, overdue and assignments due to start within set number of days as configured by administrator.
Consider a scenario, where a task/assignment in My Tasks is completed. This is done either by the Project Manager (owner) directly in the plan or the team member via collaborative task updates. When you next navigate to PWA > My Tasks to view current tasks, you will see the competed assignment. Over time, this list will get longer and longer as the number of projects are completed. Now, imagine if your business processes involved EPM timesheeting. When you Add Lines, your list will look enormous.
(click picture to enlarge)
Best Practises for dealing with this issue
Here are some of the best practice step when completing tasks/activities.
After updating the project with actuals (or % complete), Project Managers/Owners should;
- Set the ‘Publish’ flag for completed tasks to ‘No'. Note: use built-in filter to quickly identify completed tasks.
- Save Project
- Publish project
- File > Close and Check-in
(click picture to enlarge)
Doing this will stop the completed Tasks from appearing in My Tasks and My Timesheets. voilà…..sorted!!
It does involve a structured approach to ‘closing’ completed project activities/tasks but it pays off in the end.
Note: The alternative is to set the Project Resource ‘Booking Type’ to ‘Proposed’. I would not recommend this as this conflicts with Resource Management processes.
PJ - thanks for this post!! My "My Tasks" view was completely overwhelming!
ReplyDeleteOne question for you: Does changing this Publish flag have any impact on reporting capabilities, either within PWA (using views) or the cube? We're looking to produce reports that compare baseline to actuals, and I would like to know whether this process would have any impact on that in either of those environments.
Any info you can provide would be most appreciated.
Thanks!
Judy Weader
judy.weader@foresightst.com
Hi Judy;
ReplyDeleteNo. Setting the Task PUBLISH flag does not have any impact on any other features/view other than hiding the tasks/assignment from My Tasks and My Timesheets. The use case for this feature is that PMs can plan/schedule 'future' phases of your project with the resource assignment without sending 'fuild' info/data to Team Members (TMs) i.e. via My Tasks and My Timesheet. They will see only the 'confirmed' i.e. published tasks in their 'work stack'.
The PMs and Execs can, however, see the entire picture via other pwa views/reports when the project is published. The project data will appear as normal in PWA > PC and other OLAP reports i.e. OOB reports.
If you are writing 'complex' custom SQL reports then you take further advantage of this field to show or NOT show data relating to these tasks, depending on your business requirements.
Hope this helps
PJ
We are running into this situation and your solution cleared up the tasks. My question is what causes this situation in the first place? Given the number of projects we have on EPM, it does not seem like a good long term solution for our project managers.
ReplyDeleteTodd Zetlan
todd.zetlan@workscape.com
Hi Todd;
ReplyDeleteI agree with you entirely.
Unfortunately, MS have indicated that this is 'working as designed!'. I would suggest deploying a project pro macro via Ent Global which works on close (or save) event such that this is done automatically in the background without input from PMs.
Hope this helps.
Regards
PJ
Hi PJ,
ReplyDeleteIf we set the 'Publish' flag to 'No', this will stop completed tasks from appearing in the 'My Task' view. Wouldn't this also keep completed tasks/deliverables from showing up in the project plan published to PWA? If so, is there a way to avoid this.
I need completed tasks to stop appearing in 'My Tasks' view, but I still need completed tasks to show up on published plans in Project Center.
Please help!
Thanks in advance.
Alice
Hi Alice;
ReplyDeleteIf you follow the above steps, the completed tasks will be hidden in the MY TASK and TIMESHEET views. They will still be visible in other views and reports including Project Centre.
Hope this clarifies your query.
Regards
PJ
Hi Mistry,
ReplyDeleteIf We set published flag to "NO" in project professional, will that stop email alert to send all the completed tasks to the resources?
Senbag
Hi; great question. Yes, the alerts are supressed for Tasks where PUBLISH flag is NO. I will updating this post to add a macro to automate this process.
ReplyDeleteHope this helps for now.
Regards
PJ