External Tasks in MSP Could Lead to Tasks Being Deleted in External Projects

Products

• Clarity PPM On Premise
• Clarity PPM SaaS

Issue/Introduction

When opening a project with external tasks in Microsoft Project, the projects that contain the actual tasks referenced by the external tasks are also opened, displaying just those tasks. Saving back any of these projects would save them as a complete project, so the rest of the tasks will be deleted from Clarity.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Create two projects with several tasks each.
2. In one project (e.g.: prj1), add an external dependency from the other project (e.g.: prj2) to an existing task.
3. Open pr1 in Microsoft Project.
4. MSP will open both projects, but pr2 will ONLY contain the external task along with the one it depends on (i.e.: not ALL tasks).
5. Save pr2 from MSP to Clarity using the integration.
6. You will get a pop-up message "Project is not currently locked. Do you wish to force a save anyway"? Click yes.
7. Go back to Clarity and refresh pr2.

Expected Results: Rest of the pr2 tasks remain untouched.

Actual Results: Only the two tasks that were showing in pr2 while in MSP are there, the rest of the tasks have been deleted.

Environment

Clarity 16.2.2

Cause

Step 6 states that the project is not locked, which is a clear indication that the project is opened in read-only mode. Projects are locked only in write mode when opened with the clients, so that there are not inconsistencies or data loss.

Resolution

This issue is not a defect.

The dialog states that the project is not locked (indication that the project was not opened in write mode, but in read-only mode), so it is advised that the project is not saved back to Clarity in this scenario.