MSP New Driver: Not started milestones/tasks in the past change to a different date then what's in PPM

Products

• Clarity PPM SaaS
• Clarity PPM On Premise

Issue/Introduction

Not started milestones/tasks that have a predecessor exported to Microsoft Project (MSP) with dates in the past change to a different date then what's in Clarity PPM.

Environment

Release:
Component: PPMMSP

Cause

This is working as expected due to MSP behavior. This can be reproduced in MSP standalone. This can happen if the task/milestone has a predecessor and / or no constraint is set. For example, if the task has a start / finish date of 3/21/19 in PPM, but has a Start-Start predecessor that's completed with a start/finish date of 1/8/19, the task start/finish date will export to MSP with a start date of 1/8/19.

Resolution

A few options to work around the behavior:

1. Add a constraint for the task (see KB000047129 for more details on how to set a constraint)
2. Add a Lag to the dependency (IE Set the predecessor to '1SS+5 days') to push the date of the task out
3. Turn 'Calculate project after each edit' of:

• In MSP, go to File ->Options
• Click on the Schedule link on the left hand side
• Under calculation, change Calculate project after each edit to ‘Off’
• Click OK.

         Notes:

• Make sure not to click F9 on the keyboard in MSP as this will autoschedule dates. 
• This is listed as required to be set to 'On' in working with the MSP New Driver, so be sure to test this out in your projects in non production. Also if you do run into unexpected issues, this setting may need to be turned back on for Broadcom support troubleshooting