Some tasks change unexpectedly to Zero (0) day duration (Durations zero out) when opening a project from Clarity PPM and as a result Microsoft Project (MSP) coverts the tasks into milestones.
1. In Clarity PPM, create a new project with one team member
2. Create one task, and assign the team member to the task with some ETC (Example 5 hours)
3. Open the project in MSP
4. Change the % Complete to 100 for the task to mark it completed (Note that at this time, the Remaining Work (ETC) changes to 0 and the Remaining Work is moved to the Actual Work column (5 hours in this example))
5. Save the project back to PPM
6. Open the project in MSP again
Expected Results: Task duration doesn't change, and the task is not a milestone
Actual Results: Task duration is changed to 0 days, and the task is then changed to a milestone
Note: If you save the project back to PPM Clarity, the task is then also a milestone there as well. If you notice any incorrect data in MSP, it's recommended to not save the project back to Clarity as the data will be incorrect there as well.
This can happen if:
2. This is also by design in the scenario where a resource is allocated 0% on a project team in PPM, and the resource is assigned a new task (Fixed Work or Fixed Units task type) in MSP.
3. If the task Type if Fixed Units and there is no ETCs or actual work on the task.
Some best practices to prevent this issue:
1. Remove any assignments on a task before marking a task completed if actuals aren't tracked on the task.
2. Check to make sure hours submitted for a task have been posted and show up as actuals on the task before marking the task completed. (Hours change from ETCs to actuals once the Timesheet is in Posted status (which happens after the Post Timesheets job has been run)
3. To prevent tasks from changing to 0 days when created in MSP due to a resource being allocated 0% on the project in PPM:
For a list of many known MSP issues/defects see: