In a traditional waterfall, schedule-driven Project, Project Managers define the schedule for when Tasks need to be started or completed. When dates shift, Project Managers need to be able to see the impact to the rest of the Project Schedule.
In Inspire Planner, when Project Tasks are assigned to resources, a Salesforce Task is automatically created. This allows resources to then go to their Salesforce Tasks and update the status or log time against their assigned Tasks. However, the resource is not able to edit the start and finish dates of their assigned Salesforce Tasks as these dates are defined by the Project Manager from within the Project Schedule. It is recommended that any date adjustments be made within the Project Schedule so that the Project Manager is made aware of the impact to the rest of the Project.
At times, resources may start or complete their assigned Tasks earlier or later than the planned Start or Finish Date and Project Managers need to be made aware of this so that they can make the necessary adjustments to the Project Schedule.
The Actual Start Date and Actual Finish Date on the Project Task are automated fields that will populate with the date of when the Project Task when:
To see the Actual Start Date and Actual Finish Date, hover over any of the column headings and go to Columns. Select Actual Start Date and Actual Finish Date. This will then display these fields as columns within the Project Schedule.
Please Note:
You may need to scroll through the list of fields to see Actual Start Date and Actual Finish Date. If you do not see these fields, this means you likely do not have permission to these fields. Please see Admin Guide - Actual Start and Actual Finish Date.
The Actual Finish Date will populate automatically when the Project Task Status is updated to "Completed" (or equivalent value defined in Custom Settings). If there are multiple resources assigned to the Project Task, this means that there are several related Salesforce Tasks (one for each assigned resource). The Project Task Status will only update to "Completed" when all related Salesforce Tasks are marked as "Completed" (or equivalent value). It is only when the Project Task Status itself that is updated to "Completed" that the Actual Finish Date populates. Project Managers can then reference the Actual Start and Finish Dates and manually adjust the Project Task Start and Finish Dates accordingly if necessary.
If the Project Task Status is changed from "In Progress" back to "Not Started", the Inspire Planner removes the value in Actual Start Date and sets it back to a blank value. If the Project Task Status is changed from "Completed" back to "Not Started", "In Progress" or any other status value that is not equivalent to complete, then Actual Finish Date will revert to a blank value. The value in both Actual Start Date and Actual Finish Date can also be manually adjusted if needed.