How do you automatically calculate the % complete for project tasks in the planning console?

[Audrey Tolman]

Currently we have to manually calculate and populate the % complete on project tasks in the planning console.  How do we automate this?

[bammar]

Hi Audrey unless im mistaken Project tasks percentages are the smallest building blocks in the rollup to the project. Now of course they can be nested layers deep. As far as I know there is an automatic rollup  when the percentage of a project task is filled in manually- or if its closed complete which would make it 100 percent. 

The only way to further automate this is to somehow have the system understand when one of these Project tasks is partially complete which could be nearly impossible - especially if work done on a project iis done outside of servicenow and ServiceNow is used by a human being to mark certain tasks complete.... which is why i think a layered heirarchy of very small simple to complete tasks may be the only method as marking them complete would get them to 100.

[Dhiren Aghera]

Hi Audrey,

I agree what @bammar mentioned that Project tasks are the lowest level of the WBS and roll-up happens once you update the Project tasks either by %complete or by changing the state to closed complete or by updating the actual end date which is manual.

Additionally to automate, ServiceNow has a feature OOTB to assign the Project task to specific groups or user. Once this tasks are worked upon by that specific group and progress is updated accordingly, the same reflects in the Planning console and is also rolled up. This way you don't need to manually update the progress in the planning console. Respective teams working on tasks needs to update the progress only. I found this to be more useful as responsibility of keeping the tasks updated now is of the respective teams assigned to that tasks.

Hope this helps.