Tasks without assignments are getting converted to Milestones

Products

• Clarity PPM SaaS
• Clarity PPM On Premise

Issue/Introduction

Tasks without assignments are getting converted to Milestones

Environment

Release: 451-101-15.1-Clarity-Creator User License
Component:

Cause

Pre- requisite:

1. Create a Project

2. Create few Tasks as mentioned below

a. Create a 1 day, (say Test Duration Task 1) task without assignment

b. Create a 2 days, (say Test Duration Task 2) tasks with assignments (which has ETC as 0)

c. Create a 2 days, (say Test Duration Task 3) tasks without assignments

 

Also, have below MSP Field mapping in PPM

prDuration = Duration1

 

Steps:

1. Open the created project in MSP

2.  1 day task (Test Duration Task 1) displays incorrectly as a Milestone with a change in duration value.

2 days task with assignment (Test Duration Task 2) displays correctly as a Milestone, but the duration gets changed.

2 days task without assignment (Test Duration Task 3) displays correctly with no change in duration.

3. Save the project from MSP (without doing any changes) --- All the tasks duration gets changed to 0 (zero).

4. Open the same project again in MSP

 

Expected Result:

Only task with assignment (with ETC =0) should be shown as Milestone

 

Actual Result:

All the tasks are shown as Milestones.

Resolution

Reason:

 

This is because prDuration is wrongly mapped with Duration1 (MSP Field) in PPM Application under Administration-->MSP Field Mappings. With this, whenever we are saving the Project from MSP, the task duration is getting changed to 0 and when we open the same project in MSP for the second time, it is being shown as Milestone (as all the 0 duration tasks are shown as Milestone in MSP).

Note: Included the screens for better understanding

CreateMapping.PNG

AfterCreation.PNG

PPM - MSP - 1.PNG

PPM - MSP - 2.PNG

 

Resolution:

As duration is a number, we should map prDuration with Number not with Duration.

The mapping should be as shown below:

prDuration = Number1 (or any thing from Number 1..20)

Ref: Correct_Mapping.PNG

Additional Information

MSP Field Name Indicates the Microsoft Project field name that you want to map to the CA PPM attribute. 

Text and Lookup String fields: Use Text4 to Text30 

Boolean fields: Use Flag2 to Flag20 

Number fields: Use Number1 to Number20 

Date fields: Use Date1 to Date10 

those are the only MSP fields you can map to 

https://docops.ca.com/ca-ppm/15-4-1/en/using/getting-started-with-classic-ca-ppm/project-management/manage-projects-with-microsoft-project-msp/microsoft-project-msp-field-mappings