Edit task details

As a project manager, you may edit project task details, such as schedule information, resources, and status, during project execution. All the task information can be edited in the Task Details page while some can be quickly edited in the work plan page.

Filter tasks in work plan

Each project work plan includes filters that allow you to filter the work plan for a certain set of tasks, enabling you to quickly focus on the data most relevant to your activity.

Filter Name

Description

Tasks in progress

Only shows tasks in the work plan that are in progress.

Tasks complete

Only shows tasks in the work plan that are complete.

Tasks overdue

Only shows tasks in the work plan that have passed their scheduled finish date but are not yet complete.

Tasks that are unassigned

Only shows tasks in the work plan that have no resource assigned to them.

Tasks that are milestones

Only shows tasks in the work plan that are milestones.

Tasks on the critical path

Only shows tasks in the work plan that are on the critical path.

Tasks with external predecessors

Only shows tasks in the work plan that have external predecessors.

Tasks with contributions

Only shows tasks in the work plan that have time logged against them in Time Management by non-assigned resources. This can help you identify unexpected time logged against your project.

Tasks with constraints

Only shows tasks in the work plan that have constraints.

Tasks by resource

Only shows tasks in the work plan that are assigned to a specified resource(s).

Tasks by role

Only shows tasks in the work plan that are assigned to a specified role.

Tasks starting in

Only shows tasks in the work plan scheduled to start within a specified date range.

Tasks completing in

Only shows tasks in the work plan scheduled to complete within a specified date range.

Tasks occurring in

Only shows tasks in the work plan scheduled to occur within a specified date range.

Tasks with actuals since

Only shows tasks that have had actuals updated after a specified date.

For example, this is useful for finding tasks updated during the current week.
  1. Type a search keyword in the Name field.

  2. The tasks whose names includes the keyword are filtered out.

    Note:

    • The search is case insensitive. For example, if the keyword is "a", the tasks whose names include "a" and "A" are all filtered out.
    • Space counts as a part of the keyword, instead of the string separator.

If some tasks in the work plan are linked to agile projects or to other projects within PPM, you can filter out these tasks in the Quick view.

  1. In the work plan toolbar, click .

    The Default option filters our all the unlinked tasks.

    The option for an agile system icon filters our the tasks that are linked to projects in the agile system.

    The option for PPM icon filters our the tasks that are linked to other projects in PPM.

  2. Keep only the interested options selected.

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Editable task information in work plan

From the Work Plan page, certain fields can be edited and saved simultaneously for any set of tasks:

Field Description
Name Task name

Scheduled Duration

Scheduled Start

Scheduled Finish

Not editable in a summary or root task.

Two of the three fields are editable while the third field is automatically calculated (from the two editable fields).

  • In the Quick view, Scheduled Start and Scheduled Finish are editable.
  • In the other views, click Change in the work plan toolbar to select which two fields are editable.

Note: The Scheduled Finish date of a task cannot be later than the project end date if your administrator has turned on the Prevent Task Scheduled Finish Dates Extending Beyond Project End Date feature toggle. For details, see Use feature toggles to turn on/off features.

Schedule Effort

Not editable in a summary or root task.

Editable only when Scheduled Effort is controlled manually or the override of effort calculation mode is allowed per the project's Cost and Effort policy.

Otherwise, it is automatically calculated based on Scheduled Duration.
Resources Not editable in a root task. For a summary or leaf task, this field identifies the owner of the task.
Role

Not editable in a summary or root task.

If a task has no role or assigned resources, when a resource is assigned to the task, the role defaults to the primary role of the assigned resource.
Actual Finish This column is editable for completed and cancelled tasks in the work plan Quick view when the option "Allow Project Managers to manually set the Actual Finish Date for completed and cancelled tasks" is checked in the project settings.
Activity

If set at the summary task level, this field is inherited by all child tasks that do not have an activity set.

Tasks and summary tasks can inherit activities from their parent projects, making it unnecessary to manually set the activity for every task and summary task within a project. Activity inheritance adheres to the following series of rules:

  • When an activity is set on a project or summary task, the same activity cascades down to all its children. These children continue to inherit their parent's activity. If one of these children is moved to a different parent who has a different activity, the child acquires the new parent's activity.

  • When a child with an activity different than its parent's activity is found, the cascade of the parent activity stops and that child's activity is preserved, even if the child is later indented, outdented, or cut-and-pasted under a different parent.

  • Whenever a parent and its child have the same activity, if the parent's activity changes, the child's activity changes to the parent's new activity.

  • Manually setting a child's activity to an empty value makes it empty, but it will not stay empty if the child is moved to a parent with a specified activity.
Predecessors Both internal and external tasks can be added or edited from this page. Requests are displayed but cannot be added, edited, or deleted from this page.
User data

Editable if the validation component type of the user data is a text field, drop-down list, auto-complete list, or date field.

Required user data is enforced when the Task Details page is opened or if the user data field is displayed in the work plan and a task is updated from the work plan.

If a default value is set for a user data field, the default value may not appear on the Work Plan page until a task is saved.

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Edit task information from Task Details page

Some task fields are not editable on the Work Plan page (such as status, actuals, unassigned effort, and percent complete). Instead, these task fields can only be edited from the Task Details page.

What to edit How to edit
Set task as milestone Set a task as milestone
Set task constraints How to set scheduling constraints for a task
Add unassigned effort

From Task Details page > Resources tab.

  • When the project allows manually entering scheduled effort, both scheduled and actual information for unassigned effort are editable.

  • When the project automatically calculates scheduled effort,

    • and if the task has resources assigned, unassigned effort is not editable.
    • and if the task has no resources assigned, the scheduled effort for unassigned effort is not editable; % complete and actual information for unassigned effort are editable.
Adjust Actual Finish date

When a task becomes completed or cancelled, you can edit the Actual Finish field in the Statistics section to adjust the task's actual finish date to any date you want, independent on the actual finish dates of the task's resource assignments.

Note: The Actual Finish field is available for completed and cancelled tasks when the option Allow Project Managers to manually set the Actual Finish Date for completed and cancelled tasks is checked in the project settings.

By default, the field is filled with the latest actual finish date of resource assignments.

If you change the field value to a date earlier than the actual finish date of any resource assignment, a warning pops up to tell you which resources have time logged after the new date.

What happens to such resources? It depends on whether the option Do not allow logging time on completed or cancelled tasks on days after the actual finish date is checked in the project settings.

  • If the option is checked, the hours logged on the task for the days after the new actual finish date, if any, will be cleared from the resources' time sheets. When they save or submit their time sheets, the hours will be discarded and cannot be recovered.
  • If the option is not checked, the hours logged on the task for the days after the new actual finish date is kept in the resources' time sheets.

For details, see Time Management settings.
Add cost

From Task Details page > Cost tab.

Only allowed when Financial Summary for work plan is enabled. Which type of cost allows manual adding depends on the project settings:

  • You can always manually add and edit planned and actual non-labor cost.
  • You can manually add and edit actual labor cost when the option Manually entered on tasks and rolled up to summary tasks is selected for actual labor costs.
  • You can manually add and edit planned labor cost when the option Manually entered on tasks and rolled up to summary tasks is selected for planned labor costs.

For details, see Financial Management settings.
Configure notifications Set up task notifications
Add notes

From Task Details page > Notes tab.

Notes added by the task resources, if any, are also visible from this tab.

The Notes tab can contain up to 32K of information per work plan.

Add references

From Task Details page > References tab.

References added by the task resources, if any, are also visible from this tab.

Note: You can still add references for closed projects.

Note: Click and on the Task Details page to navigate from task to task, as they are displayed on the Work Plan page.

  • Task-to-task navigation takes into account the expand/collapse state of the Work Plan page. If a summary task is collapsed on the Work Plan page, clicking will not navigate through the summary task's children.

  • Task-to-task navigation also takes into account any filters that have been applied to the Work Plan page. If a filter has been applied to the Work Plan page, clicking navigates to the next task in the filtered set.

    Summary tasks may be shown on the Work Plan page in grey italics to provide context to a filtered set.

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Edit multiple tasks simultaneously

From the work plan (other than the Quick view), you can perform some edits simultaneously for multiple tasks.

  1. Use Shift + click to select a set of contiguous rows, or use Ctrl + click to select multiple non-contiguous selections.

  2. In the work plan toolbar > Edit option, select what you want to edit.

    If there is an error during the save, the task that caused the error is highlighted in the work plan.

    In the Enter Actuals page, edit Actual Effort, Percent Complete, Actual Start, and Actual Finish, and click Save or Done.

    • If Time Management has been enabled for the project, you may not be able to provide Actual Effort values for resources whose actuals are expected to be provided through time sheets.

    • PPM by default defers rolling up resource actuals entered in this page to the summary task and defers calculation exceptions.

      If you want PPM to roll up resource actuals and re-calculation exceptions upon saving actuals, in the top right corner of the page, click Change to select the Rollup actuals and re-calculate exceptions during save option.

    • If the work plan is filtered by resource, the Enter Actuals page only displays the assignments of the filtered resource.

    In the Resource Assignments window, choose to:

    • Assign or remove specified resources to all the selected tasks.

      Resources whose assignments have actuals cannot be removed from a task.

    • Replace an assigned resource with another specified resource for all the selected tasks.

      Assignments that have already started are not swapped. If task scheduled effort is being managed manually, the new resource inherits the old resource's scheduled effort.

    • Remove all resource assignments from all the selected tasks.

      Tasks with actuals are not changed.

    • Replace all existing assignments with the specified resources.

      Tasks with actuals are not changed. If task scheduled effort is being managed manually, the new resource's scheduled effort is set to zero.

    In the Set Role window, select a role to replace any existing roles of all the selected tasks.

    In the Shift Task Schedule window, shift the scheduled dates for all the selected tasks forward or backward by any number of days.

    We recommend you do not do this if you are also using the project scheduler as described in Schedule work plan or summary tasks.

    In the Link Tasks window, clicking Link Tasks, you quickly link all the selected tasks sequentially as predecessors. The tasks will be assigned predecessor relationships based on their sequential order as defined by the work plan.

    In the Set Status window, select a status to replace the current status of all the selected tasks.

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Avoid conflicts in concurrent work plan editing

A single project may have many project managers who are editing different parts of the work plan. Project Management allows you to edit and update separate parts of work plans simultaneously, allowing for more efficient representation of changes to a project.

In general, two users cannot make edits to the same task simultaneously.

  • If two users are editing a task simultaneously, the only changes saved will be the first set. The second user will not be able to save any changes. This includes instances where a resource logs actuals for a task.

    For example: Yukio is the manager for a project to which Bob is assigned.

    1. Yukio opens a task and begins to make changes.
    2. Bob updates the actuals for that task using the My Tasks portlet and clicks Save.
    3. Yukio is unable to save her changes to the task.

  • An error message results if a user attempts to schedule the work plan while the work plan is being scheduled by another user.

It is recommended that project managers avoid making changes to the work plan during times when many resources are entering actuals.

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