Planned Project Dates not working as expected.

[Bob20]

I'm puzzled by how ServiceNow handles planned dates in projects... The math and how dates relate to tasks is understood. What I do not understand is the philosophy of why planned dates change at all. If I have a project in MS project, build my tasks, set my baseline, the planned dates remain the same as I progress through the project. The planned dates are locked and used for deviation. In ServiceNow, if I have a project with a planned end date of May 31 and my last task runs late, the planned end date of the task and the project is pushed back, losing the deviation information.... Or am I thinking about this incorrectly?

Also if I have a task and the work has been completed and I'm a bit late closing the task in SN, when use the calendar setting the Actual End Date, and I set the task as Closed Complete, I would expect that the Actual Closed Date to be the one I set, not the date (today's date) when I clicked "Update" on the Task record. For example, If I had a task with an Actual Start Date of April 1 and a Planned End Date of April 7, and the Actual Completed Date is April 8, but I do not get a chance to update my Task record as closed until April 12, then, even if I set the Closed Date to April 8, the Actual Close Date is reset to April 12. This is somewhat unexpected behavior. When I set the date with the calendar, that's the date SN should use for the Closed Date field (then check if it's valid).

Thanks for your input.

[Bob20]

Kelly, I'm aware of that document however it does not explain the rational behind the dates. If I have a plan, that is the plan when the project starts. The end date also gets set as well when the projects starts based on planned duration as expected. Now if a task runs late, my planned end date should not change, that's why it's the plan. ServiceNow is simply changing the ending date and will have then lost my planned end date. Ten weeks into a twelve week a project and my planned end date might be out three weeks due to this behavior. So at eleven weeks... What was the planned end date again? I would like to understand WHY this is the current behavior. And it would be great top see an option in Project/Settings/Preferences that locks Project Planned Start and End Dates as well as the dates for Tasks once the   project set to WIP or higher.

[Earl L]

Bob,

I'm in agreement with you, about how planned end dates should work. If everything shifts then it's going to be impossible to know how to get a project back on the originally planned schedule.

From my point of view, there should be some succinct business rules in place that control the behavior of planned end dates, and the fact that when you close a task it blindly defaults to the current date for the date entry. Maybe if enough of us jump into that ServiceNow Product Lab we might be able to have some influence on how this works in future releases.

Earl

[kellykaufmann]

Hi Bob

I wasn't part of original WBS planning in ServiceNow but I can speculate about intention to use baselines to compare original planned end vs current planned end based on delayed predecessor dependencies, and can speculate that this was the later down the road reason for providing the choice between automatic vs manual calculations to control this (Project calculation). If you are using 'Start ASAP' instead of 'Start on Specific Date', you use 'Planned Duration' to determine the 'Planned End Date' (consider it like an equal sign in Excel, e.g. '=A1+10 where A1 is the predecessor end date and if the duration is 10 days) so your predecessor obviously is in complete control over what happens to the Planned End Date (again which is based on the set duration, isn't an actual date entered), and if the dates for the predecessor tasks change, obviously the planned end date is going to end. A way to avoid this is to use Manual calculations or to set the task to start on a specific date. I, too, like to see at a task level (so not having to rely on the WBS view of a baseline) what the original planned end date was...this would be a good enhancement request to submit (hint hint).

As for the Actual End Date scenario mentioned in your OP, I personally agree with the setup of current functionality that Actual End Date default to the date it's closed vs the date that was in there originally. I think SN assumes users are active in the system daily across the modules. For this one I would imagine customers being completely split on preference (you being opposite thinking than me on this), and having to just pick one vs the other.

[Bob20]

Kelly, Thanks for taking time to help explain the ins and outs of my Project Date dilemma. Based on that information, I do think an option to change the date behavior in the Settings would be a great addition to the Project space in SN. I'll submit it. I'm also scheduled to attend Knowledge 17 and I'll chat with the Project folks at that time as well.

Cheers,

Bob.

[Bob20]

Also is there an explanation as to why if I set a specific date as the Task end date, that regardless what I set it to, it always reset to todays date. From the original question:

"Also if I have a task and the work has been completed and I'm a bit late closing the task in SN, when use the calendar setting the Actual End Date, and I set the task as Closed Complete, I would expect that the Actual Closed Date to be the one I set, not the date (today's date) when I clicked "Update" on the Task record. For example, If I had a task with an Actual Start Date of April 1 and a Planned End Date of April 7, and the Actual Completed Date is April 8, but I do not get a chance to update my Task record as closed until April 12, then, even if I set the Closed Date to April 8, the Actual Close Date is reset to April 12. This is somewhat unexpected behavior. When I set the date with the calendar, that's the date SN should use for the Closed Date field (then check if it's valid)."

Thanks for you efforts looking into this.