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MSP Error "Project Save Failed" due to summary task start / finish date

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Article ID: 100653

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Updated On:

Products

Clarity PPM On Premise Clarity PPM SaaS

Issue/Introduction

Trying to save a project back from MSP (Microsoft Project) to Clarity and receive a Project Save Failed error message. Prior to the project save failed message, you may see it throwing an error message <task> in <Project Name> cannot be completed in the time allocated because there is a scheduling conflict between this task and another one to which it is linked".

In the app-ca.logs, you will 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 the following KB that will walk both On Premise and SaaS customers on steps to retrieve the log: Access the app-ca.log or other Clarity Logs

Environment

Release: All Supported Releases
Component: MSP New Driver

Cause

  1. One reason this happens is if a Summary task on the project is manually scheduled and any of its subtasks' Start / Finish dates fall outside the range of the summary task. Even if summary tasks are set as auto scheduled, if you manually change the start date, finish date, or duration of the summary task, it will change the summary task to manually scheduled. This is because for Summary tasks that are auto scheduled dates/duration are calculated based on the child tasks under it. So, if you manually change a summary task date or duration, MSP looks at this behavior as being that of a manually scheduled summary task instead of an auto scheduled summary task.
  2. This issue can also happen if you set a date of a different task, and drag the date cell to tasks that include the summary task

Here's how you can find problem tasks:

  1. Filter on manually scheduled summary tasks
  2. Check for any summary task finish dates underlined in red by MSP
  3. Clear the manually filtered tasks and instead filter on tasks with dates greater than the summary tasks
  4. Check for any tasks that appear in the results that are located beneath the summary task as a child task

Resolution

Option 1: Change any tasks, including summary tasks, that are Manually Scheduled to Auto Scheduled

OR

Option 2: Make sure the Summary task Start/finish dates are updated to include the range of all tasks beneath it.

OR

Option 3: Update all the child tasks under the impacted Summary task to ensure the dates of the tasks fall within the range of the summary task. 

Important: MSP may be autoscheduling the tasks to push them out, particularly if one or more resources are over allocated on a task, so this 3rd option may not work unless the scheduling issues are corrected so the assignment isn't overallocated

Tip: To check for any manually scheduled summary tasks:  

  1. Add the Task Mode column to the MSP View
  2. Click on the Task Mode drop down and uncheck all check boxes except for Manually Scheduled
  3. You can also filter on just Summary tasks by clicking on the drop down next to Filter in the View tab drop down and selecting 'Summary Tasks'

Additional Information

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