Forum Discussion
Custom Enterprise Fields not updating
Hi all,
Recently, I have noticed a strange behavior with the MS Project Online. I have the team members updating their progress though the Tasks page with no issues. As requested by the project leadership, I have created a Custom Enterprise text field for tasks - "Progress Comments". This is where the team members are to add explanation to a respective tasks that is running late.
If I add "Progress Comments" to this field in desktop app, these comments feed through to the online environment. I can also add comments in the schedule view in online environment. However, if the team members add "Progress Comments" while providing their task update, these comments don't show up in the schedule. When the task updates come to me for approval, I can see the added comments, I can also see them in the Status Update History. They just don't feed through to the schedule.
For example the latest task status update you can clearly see the added comments in the custom field were approved:
However, these were not carried through to the schedule:
This is quite frustrating given the provided commentary feeds through to the weekly report.
The settings for the Enterprise field are:
I appreciate any help or suggestions on what to change to have the commentary function available.
Thanks,
Peter
To close the look to the above question, in case someone in the future has a similar query, below is the response we received from Microsoft support.
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The task-based text custom field is added to the My Tasks page [tasks.aspx] where users manually enter values in that custom field and send the task update to the status manager/Project Manager. Though the task update is approved and the project is published by the project manager still the values aren't appearing in the PWA Schedule at the task level. This behavior is expected because the data you enter in timesheet or tasks page is at the assignment level. Let us consider an example a task is assigned to multiple resources and each resource submits different values from his timesheet/tasks page then what value task will show up? Therefore the values we submit will be visible at the assignment level, we can open the project in project client and change the view to task usage. After that add the same column which is added in the tasks.aspx page and you should be able to see the same values in that column submitted by the resources.
In the below screenshot, I have a custom field added "Test Either" and I submitted the value 12 under task T10.
After I approved the task update and published the plan, I could see the same value in the resource usage view corresponding to that task
However, if you wanted to keep the same value updated at the assignment level also then you may change the settings of the custom field under server settings > enterprise custom fields and lookup tables, open the custom field, and change the option to roll down unless manually specified. After that, update the value at the task level either in PWA or project client and publish the plan and then you would see the same value appearing in the tasks page and at the assignment level also.
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The above description highlights why this behavior is by design, but it will not make the value in the custom enterprise column visible against given task in the schedule. Knowing that the data in the custom field is still there and which table it is located in, for our purpose this will suffice. Our reports are built from data dump into Excel and running several queries and/or Power BI dashboards. Knowing that the data is actually there, just in different table, I'm able to extract this table and link the values in the custom enterprise field with the tasks in the schedule based on WBS task code.
To close the look to the above question, in case someone in the future has a similar query, below is the response we received from Microsoft support.
------------------------------
The task-based text custom field is added to the My Tasks page [tasks.aspx] where users manually enter values in that custom field and send the task update to the status manager/Project Manager. Though the task update is approved and the project is published by the project manager still the values aren't appearing in the PWA Schedule at the task level. This behavior is expected because the data you enter in timesheet or tasks page is at the assignment level. Let us consider an example a task is assigned to multiple resources and each resource submits different values from his timesheet/tasks page then what value task will show up? Therefore the values we submit will be visible at the assignment level, we can open the project in project client and change the view to task usage. After that add the same column which is added in the tasks.aspx page and you should be able to see the same values in that column submitted by the resources.
In the below screenshot, I have a custom field added "Test Either" and I submitted the value 12 under task T10.
After I approved the task update and published the plan, I could see the same value in the resource usage view corresponding to that task
However, if you wanted to keep the same value updated at the assignment level also then you may change the settings of the custom field under server settings > enterprise custom fields and lookup tables, open the custom field, and change the option to roll down unless manually specified. After that, update the value at the task level either in PWA or project client and publish the plan and then you would see the same value appearing in the tasks page and at the assignment level also.
--------------------------------
The above description highlights why this behavior is by design, but it will not make the value in the custom enterprise column visible against given task in the schedule. Knowing that the data in the custom field is still there and which table it is located in, for our purpose this will suffice. Our reports are built from data dump into Excel and running several queries and/or Power BI dashboards. Knowing that the data is actually there, just in different table, I'm able to extract this table and link the values in the custom enterprise field with the tasks in the schedule based on WBS task code.
- Peter --
I have absolutely no idea why your custom field is not working. Based on how you set up this field, it should be working. So, sorry I cannot be of more help with that. However, I would ask why you are not using the built-in Notes field for capturing team member comments. My personal experience has been that the Notes field works flawlessly for documenting conversations between the PM and the TMs. Just a thought. Hope this helps.Dale,
I appreciate you coming back. We use the progress comments pure on exception. It a particular task is running late, the resource needs to provide explanation for the cause and what is being done about it. These are then exported to weekly progress report.
The notes feature works well, but I found a couple of limitations with it:
- The only way the user can see what notes are against a task when providing their weekly progress is when they go into the task details page. You are not physically able to add notes column to the Tasks page view. This adds a redundant and time consuming step, and
- the notes are kept in chronological order. Meaning that when I export the task progress for weekly report, not for all past weeks come with, not just the note applicable for last reporting period, e.g. of chronological notes:Note, they are not even time stamped....
