Actual Dates in the Future

mematta
Mega Contributor

‎01-21-2022 12:32 PM

Is anyone else contending with the issue that Service Now PPM permits actual start and actual end dates to be in the future?  

This stems from the workflow where the Actual date is populated by the Planned date when the project task state changes.  It does not matter that the Planned date may be in the future. 

We have a custom warning message in the project task form view, but this is only a warning.  And we don't get a warning when the Actual date is populated with a change in the project task list view.  

This renders the Actual Duration highly erratic and therefore meaningless on reports and views.  We spend many extra cycles having to ask users to go back and correct the Actual date.  

0 Helpfuls
  • 858 Views
3 REPLIES 3

Dhiren Aghera
Tera Guru

‎01-23-2022 09:07 PM

Hi Mematta,

Yes this is how the OOTB behavior is and we have seen this with MS Project also. This is more of an awareness to the users to make sure that before updating the task completion the dates are not in future. Understand there is no restrictions in place. 

Also with the recent release ServiceNow has introduced status field at task level to keep a track of project tasks progress.

find_real_file.png

Also to adhere to this issue we have created a widget in Quality dashboard to reflect such projects where the end date is in future. This way we it ease to identify non compliance projects are flag accordingly.

find_real_file.png

 

Preview file
41 KB
Preview file
14 KB
0 Helpfuls

mematta
Mega Contributor

‎01-24-2022 06:37 AM

Thanks, Dhiren.  We do have widgets to show that there are actual dates in the future, and try to stay in front of this, but it is a constant housekeeping effort. 

I would prefer a restriction vs a part time warning message and cumulative hours wasted going back to users to correct the error.  Or, remove the auto-populate of the actual date, which would require the user to mark the date as they are actually starting or actually ending a task.  

 

0 Helpfuls

Dhiren Aghera
Tera Guru
In response to mematta

‎01-25-2022 01:56 AM

Hi Mematta,

Yes agree its more of house keeping to do, but at least an assurity to know how many non-compliance we are dealing with. We have experienced that over the period of time this number slowly comes down.

For your ask it would be a whole lot of customization and moving away from the OOTB functionality.

You can put in a request to your ServiceNow team and they can asses the level of impact and complexity involved to customize the behavior.

0 Helpfuls