In a traditional waterfall, schedule-driven Project, Project Managers define the schedule for when Tasks need to be 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 complete their assigned Tasks earlier or later than the anticipated 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 Finish Date on the Project Task is an automated field that will populate with the date of when the Project Task was updated to "Completed" (or equivalent value defined in Custom Settings). This makes it easier for Project Managers to see when a Task was actually completed so that they can then make the necessary adjustments to the Project Schedule.
To see the Actual Finish Date, hover over any of the column headings and go to Columns. Select Actual Finish Date. This will then display the field as a column within the Project Schedule.
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 Finish Date and adjust the Project Task Finish Date accordingly.
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 Actual Finish Date can also be manually adjusted if needed.