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Planned Dates override Actual Dates ?

7 replies [Last post]
Mon, 2009-03-16 05:55
Hannes de Bruyne
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I’v been using Planned Dates and "update progress" for some time now. But I still cannot find any reason why Planned dates override Actual dates when using "update Progress".
Can somebody explain this? Or is there even a way to change these settings?
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Replies

Sun, 2009-03-22 06:56
#1
Paul Harris
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Using Update Progress function in P6 updates the activities using the Planned Dates not the current schedule dates.

The Planned Dates are very complex and their calculation method is outlined in my P6 book, in summary:

1. When an activity is Complete or In-progress they match the status of the schedule before the last update.

2. When an activity has Not Started they match the Early Start and Early Finish.

The problems with the Planned Dates:

1. The Planned Dates are dates that most schedulers would not want displayed.

2. These dates displayed as the Project Baseline bars and Primary User Baseline bars when no baseline has been assigned.

3. Theses dates are used by the Update Progress function and Apply Actuals function.

I strongly recomend that you never ever use the Update Progress function in P6 as it will often change Actual Dates.

Some people use a Global Change to set the planned Dates to the Start & Finish dates, but if you do this you may alter the Original Duration and change the % Complete calculation.

This is one of the many functions that Primavera have written into this product that make it very hard to use.

Paul E Harris
Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia
Planning and Scheduling Training Manual & Book Publishers, Consulting and Training
www.eh.com.au
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Thu, 2009-03-19 11:40
#2
Hannes de Bruyne
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Thank you

I had a problem that somebody wrote a date into the field "FINISH". (I think this is a very bad practice and this was not possible in 3.1, so I did not know this possibility). This date was now automaticly stored into planned date. As I never used planned date before, a unexpected result occurred. Schedule gives a different result from apply actuals or update progress...

I now solved the problem with a global change: replace planned dates with start and finish, as they have taken the values of my actuals.

Regards Hannes
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Wed, 2009-03-18 06:07
#3
Dieter Wambach
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Hallo Hannes

This is out of P6 PMrefManual (p.308)
"The date the activity is scheduled to begin. This date is set equal to the early start date by the project scheduler but can be updated manually by the project manager. This date is not changed by the project scheduler once you apply an Actual Start date." (End of quotation)

The progress spotlight uses the planned dates and it seems to ignore the actual dates.
One hint is in the explanation of "update progress": First update progress then set individual dates for activities which didn’t progress according to plan.

Beste Grüße aus dem Rheingau
Dieter

Catalan
Update progress ignores actuals later than data date.

Regards
Dieter
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Wed, 2009-03-18 05:14
#4
R. Catalan
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Hannes,

Check your data date when using the update progress features. Most probably your "new data date" is earlier than the "current data date".

Definitely it will override all actual dates of current progress if it is earlier that current data date.

Hope this will help.

R. Catalan

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Wed, 2009-03-18 05:01
#5
Anoon Iimos
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Hi Hannes,

I supposed the principle of "automatic updating" only applies to "Baseline Schedules". Thus, making your "planned dates" equal to "actual dates".

regards
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Wed, 2009-03-18 04:38
#6
Hannes de Bruyne
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Hello Dieter

yes I did

although I don’t like the idea of automatic updating I checked both options. But this overide of actual dates does not seen logical at all to me. Only after reading the Refmanual it was clear to me that I was not making a mistake - but I still did nit find a logical explanation

Regards
Hannes
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Mon, 2009-03-16 06:14
#7
Dieter Wambach
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Hallo Hannes

Did you check "Autocompute Actuals"? It can be in:
- Activity
- Resource
- Expense

Better not change for started activities.

Regards

Dieter
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