Forum Discussion
Actual Task Hours "Auto-populating" in Resource Timesheet
Hello!
I have a question about tasks that seem to have time actual values "auto-populate" in them on an employee's timesheets. Basically, when looking at a timesheet in Project Online (PWA), what causes some tasks to automatically show an hour value, when the resource has not yet entered anytime? Where-as other tasks on the same project will not show this automatically populated time, even though they are assigned to the same resource and still have time remaining?
I have an example below. Of the three tasks below, all 3 were still active, but only the "Project Management" task is displaying values in the "Actual" field that the resource did not enter?
Looking at the task details in the Project Desktop application, all of the tasks are very similar in the Assignment Information. They are all assigned to the same resource, they are all manually scheduled, etc. The only difference that I can see is the "Work Contour" field show as "Contoured" on the task that is auto-populating time values. Whereas the other tasks are set as "Flat".
Project Management Task Info:
Other Task Info:
Would this "Work Contour" field be having the impact described above on the employees' hours on the Timesheet? If so, how/where is "Work Contour" being determined?
If something else may be causing the auto-populating values on the Timesheet, I would be happy for any additional information.
Thanks!
Chris
- Cleymay300 --
If the project manager opens the enterprise project in Microsoft Project, and then manually enters a % Complete value on a task with resources assigned to it, the software will automatically calculate the Actual Work for each resource assigned to the task. If the PM then publishes the project, the Actual Work will automatically show up on each resource's Timesheet page in PWA. Have you quizzed your PMs to determine whether any of them are doing what I just described? If they are, tell them to stop doing this, as it appears you want all progress to be entered from the Timesheet page in PWA. The only exception for your PMs is that they can manually mark the % Complete value to 100% on only Milestone tasks. Hope this helps.
- Clemay300 --
When Actual Work values appear automatically on the Timesheet page for one or more users, this indicates that the project manager has manually entered Actual Work for those tasks in the Microsoft Project schedule. Otherwise, there should never be Actual Work values that are automatically populated for a user. Would that explain them mystery? Let us know and we will try to help you.Thank you for the quick reply!
To clarify, if a project manager manually manipulating the "Actual Work" values for the tasks in questions, where would they have done that?
Looking at the task in the project in question I can add the "Actual Work" field, however, our PMs are not very adventurous in poking around the app, so I do not think they would have added that field and then updated it. Would they be doing these manual edits elsewhere?
- Cleymay300 --
If the project manager opens the enterprise project in Microsoft Project, and then manually enters a % Complete value on a task with resources assigned to it, the software will automatically calculate the Actual Work for each resource assigned to the task. If the PM then publishes the project, the Actual Work will automatically show up on each resource's Timesheet page in PWA. Have you quizzed your PMs to determine whether any of them are doing what I just described? If they are, tell them to stop doing this, as it appears you want all progress to be entered from the Timesheet page in PWA. The only exception for your PMs is that they can manually mark the % Complete value to 100% on only Milestone tasks. Hope this helps.
