Project Operations- task completion vs estimated effort

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Posted on by Danielle H

Hi everyone,

I hope you can help me 😊

I have a couple of related queries...

1) In Project Operations when the estimated effort is equal to the time tracked against the task it's automatically marking that task as complete. That's not actually helpful for me as the project manager as I need to know when the task is actually done, regardless of if we take longer than expected to perform that task. How can I stop this from automatically happening?

2) When I mark a task as complete that has LESS time tracked against it than expected, what happens to that effort? Is there a clever way to review 'unused effort' on the project?

3) Lastly, when I do (manually) set a task as completed I'd like that to prohibit any remaining hours being logged to that task. Is there a way to automate this?

Many thanks,

Danielle

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Dynamics 365 Project Operations

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Juan Simon 1,026 on at

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Hi Danielle,

Answers:

1) This is out-of-the-box behavior in Project Operations. The system marks tasks as 100% complete when actual hours equal estimated effort. If more work is needed, increase the estimated effort on the task. This automatically reduces the completion percentage back below 100% until the work is truly finished.

2) You can review it by including the Effort Remaining column inside the task grid:

3) Only through customization at the moment.

If this helps, please mark this as answered.

Thanks.

Juan Simon
www.linkedin.com/in/juan-simon
https://d365hacks.com/

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Danielle H 26 on at

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@Juan Simon thank you so much for your reply!

Just a follow up to some of your answers...

question 1- If I increase the estimated effort then I'm not able to track 'overspent' effort. For internal purposes it would be good to know if we're consistently underestimating a certain task. Is there a way to do this that you know of?

question 2- As we will have a contract tied to our project I don't think I can alter percentage complete. Therefore the task won't show as 100% when the effort isn't all used. Are you aware of any work arounds here?

Many thanks,

Danni

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Juan Simon 1,026 on at

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Hi @Danielle H,

question 1- If I increase the estimated effort then I'm not able to track 'overspent' effort. For internal purposes it would be good to know if we're consistently underestimating a certain task. Is there a way to do this that you know of?

Inside Tasks nothing is stopping the PM from changing the effort up or down. Without resorting to a custom solution, you can leverage the Contract and Budget functionalities. When you import tasks from a Project into a contract it stores that 'snapshot there. So if you either consume more or less time, it will show the delta in the actuals as you approve time. And these can be compared. The budget is a similar idea, you create a snapshot, and better than the Contract it shows the delta per line in a better consumable way in my view.

question 2- As we will have a contract tied to our project I don't think I can alter percentage complete. Therefore the task won't show as 100% when the effort isn't all used. Are you aware of any work arounds here? You can alter the percentage complete by completing the task. No actuals are created (unless you use the version that does not use Tim Entries). The work around is automation or a report that allows you to see this more clearly. Otherwise the budget might be you best bet.

I will try and blog about this in the near future to provide options around this. I hope this helps!

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Danielle H 26 on at

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Hello @Juan Simon!

Thank you so much for responding again; you have been so helpful and i really appreciate it.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by 'import tasks into a contract' or utilising the budget as a baseline so if you do blog about this i'd really like to read it :) Is there a way for me to follow you and get notified when you post? I clicked through to your profile but couldn't see anything obvious.

I hope you have a lovely holiday season.

Kindest regards,

Danielle

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