MSP Error: "Project Save Failed" if task Finish date is prior to Start date
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MSP Error: "Project Save Failed" if task Finish date is prior to Start date

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Article ID: 224659

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Updated On:

Products

Clarity PPM On Premise Clarity PPM SaaS

Issue/Introduction

A specific project is not saving back to clarity and instead you see a 'Project save failed' error. 

In the app-ca.logs, you see the following Warning message 'ImportTaskProcessor.doProcess(): Illegal Task Start and/or Finish dates' related to schedulers.postProject.

Tip: To get to the app-ca.logs, see Access the app-ca.log or other Clarity Logs that will walk both On Premise and SaaS customers on steps to retrieve the log.

Environment

Release : All Supported

Component : Clarity Microsoft Project Interface

Cause

This is due to their being an invalid date sequence that is not supported with Clarity. The Start date of a task must be less than or equal to the task's Finish date to be able to be saved back to Clarity. This may be noticed with a manually scheduled task. One possible cause of the invalid sequence of dates happening may be related to the task unexpectedly being converted into a milestone. To avoid tasks being changed unexpectedly into milestones, follow the recommendations in the following KB: MSP: Tasks are changing to 0 day duration / milestones

Resolution

Check for any tasks that have a Start date later than the task's Finish date. If any are found, update the task dates so that the task's Start date is earlier than the task's Finish date.

There are a couple of options you can use to check to see if any tasks are impacted by this issue. See those options below. 

Option 1: Create a custom field in MSP

  1. In MSP, click on the Project tab
  2. Click on the Custom Fields button in the top menu
  3. Click on a text field not in use already (Do not use Text1 - Text5 or any other field that is used for data already)
  4. Click Formula
  5. Paste in the following: [Start]>[Finish]
  6. Click OK
  7. Click OK again
  8. Add the Text field you created the formula for to a task view
  9. Click on the header drop-down for the Text field, then check for any with a "-1" value. If that value shows, check only the check box for that option. 
  10. This will display any tasks with the issue. Correct the impacted tasks.

Option 2: Add a formula in Excel

  1. Copy all the Start/Finish dates in the project in MSP into Excel (you can include the task names too as needed)
  2. In a new column in Excel, add a column name in row 1 (IE "Task Date Issue")
  3. For the first row with dates, enter the following formula "=IF(A2>B2, "YES", "NO")" into the new column
  4. Click on the right-hand corner of the cell and drag your mouse down all the way to the last row with dates populated
  5. Then filter for any rows = Yes for the Task Date Issue column

Additional Information

For another known issue related to illegal start/finish date errors, see:

For other causes of the Project Save failed error see: MSP Error: 'Project Save Failed'

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