Project actual end date

[rleandro]

Hi, All.

Can the functionality of the project "Actual end date" be changed, so that it is updated with the date of a phase transition (Delivering > Closing), instead of date of last task when project state is set to Close Completed?

What would be the impact of such a change?

How could it be implemented?

Thanks in advance.

[Namita Mishra · Accepted solution]

Hi @rleandro ,

Hope you are doing well and Thanks for taking advise before customizing the code.

Typically a project has multiple phases and every phase further consist of multiple tasks.

Now when the phases are transitioned - that is the time from when that phase execution begins. In other words, transitioning of the phase is the beginning of the phase. After this, the tasks of that phase executes and when the last task completes, the phase also gets completed.

This is the reason, IMHO, since transitioning of the phase is the beginning of the phase and not the completion that is why changing 'Actual' End date should NOT be updated with the date of phase transitioning.

Please let me know if this explanation makes sense in your scenario. If it does, please mark the response as correct answer.

Happy Weekend !!

Thank You!

Namita Mishra

[Lauri Arra]

This is the correct answer, but one problem several customers face is that they build reporting based on the phase/stage and want to use it to identify project's that have been closed. As long as the users rely on such reporting, the last phase/stage is (incorrectly) not considered as containing a set of tasks. 

So users would have to understand how to build the PMO reports and how to differentiate between projects that are:

1. being closed
2. closed completely
3. closed, but contain a couple of post tasks such as deployment satisfaction review

[rleandro]

Thanks for the comments.

In our case, issue is similar and related to project completion KPIs.

We are using Closing phase for activities such as financial closing (actuals, etc), but need to have a previous well defined data to identify when the project was completely delivered from the project team side.

[rleandro]

Thanks for your guidance!

Our decision was to not change this functionality and create a new field to capture the Delivering>Closing transition date.