% Complete not calculating for Child Tasks that are Milestones
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% Complete not calculating for Child Tasks that are Milestones

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Article ID: 31009

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Updated On:

Products

Clarity PPM SaaS Clarity PPM On Premise

Issue/Introduction

Issue:

A Summary Task's % Complete is not updating based on it's child task even though the % Complete Calculation Method is set to 'Effort' or 'Duration' for the project and the 'Update % Complete' job has been run.

Scenario: The system is set to automatically calculate task completion status on effort basis. When a task has sub-tasks which have effort booked against them, the task completion status of the sub-task as well as the task are calculated correctly. When a task has only a milestone as sub-tasks and the % completion status of the milestone is changed manually (as no efforts can be booked on a milestone) this is not reflected in the task. E.g. the nested milestone is set to 100%, but the next-level task still shows 0% completion.

When 'Duration' is used, milestone tasks have a 0 duration and the % complete calculation method for duration

  • The duration is a measure of the total span of active working time for a task: from the start date to the finish date of a task. The % Complete for summary tasks is automatically calculated based on the following formula:
     
    Calculation: Summary Task % Complete = Total Detail Task Duration Complete / Total Detail Task Duration
     
  • Since Milestones have 0 days, the calculation cannot be performed

 

Steps to Reproduce for Effort:

  1. Create a project and set the % completion method as "effort".
  2. Create one Key Task and one Milestone task under that project. 
  3. Open the project in the PPM Gantt view and indent the Milestone task under the Key task. 
  4. Now the key task is the parent and the Milestone is the child. 
  5. Since it is a Milestone, the % complete can be set as 100 manually. 
  6. Do the same and save the change.

Expected result:

The % complete for the parent Key Task shows as 100.

Actual result: 

The % complete for the parent Key Task remains 0.

Environment

Release: All Supported Releases
Component: PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Cause

Working as designed

Resolution

Sustaining Engineering reviewed and determined that this is not a bug. The summary task does not pull % Complete from any of its child tasks that are milestones. Tasks that are milestones cannot have work, so the parent summary task's % Complete does not update based on the child tasks. 

Similar explanation for Duration.  Milestone tasks have no duration so they cannot be used in the % Complete Calculation Method.  If all children tasks are milestones, the parent will not show as completed even if all the milestones show as 100% completed.

Additional Information

Reference  Define Default Project Settings  for information on the different types of % Calculation Methods available in Clarity