MSP: Task Finish dates change to Actuals thru date

Products

• Clarity PPM On Premise
• Clarity PPM SaaS

Issue/Introduction

You have a task that is completed with no hours remaining and the finish date is defaulting to the actuals thru date in Microsoft Project (MSP) using the non-legacy interface. It's expected the finish date on completed tasks should remain whatever it shows in Clarity. 

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Create a project in Clarity with one team member
2. Export the project to MSP
3. Add a fixed work task and assign the resource to the task with dates of 8/3/20 - 8/14/20
4. Save the project back to Clarity
5. Submit time as the resource assigned to the task for a time frame of 8/3/20 - 8/14/20. Make sure to submit actuals that are greater than or equal to the amount of ETCs left.
6. Once time has been posted, mark the task as completed
7. Now add another task to the project and assign the resource to the task with dates of 7/5/21 - 7/9/21
8. Submit time as the resource assigned to the task for a time frame of 7/5/21 - 7/9/21
9. Once time has posted, export the project to MSP and view the finish date of the first task

Expected Results: Task Finish date hasn't changed (shows the date for when actuals were submitted during August 2020 time frame)

Actual Results: Task finish date changes to actual thru date (in the above example, 7/9/21)

Environment

Release : 15.9.1

Component : CLARITY MICROSOFT PROJECT (MSP)

MSP Version impacted: Microsoft Project 2016 32 bit level version 16.0.7301.1019

Cause

This issue appears to be due to an issue with the Microsoft Project version used

Resolution

Upgrade Microsoft Project to the latest available update. See Microsoft Project monthly patches impact with Clarity for more information regarding MSP updates. 

Additional Information

See the below for information on task behavior in MSP when working with timesheets as referenced in tech docs at: Resource Assignment Information Field Mapping

Any assignment that exists in Classic PPM when a timesheet for that resource is posted gets an Actuals Thru date equal to the end of the timesheet period. Conditions can exist where you inadvertently place remaining work before this date. The following examples illustrate this condition:

• A task has actuals that end before the Actuals Thru date and has no remaining work, but require to add work. You enter an updated Remaining Work amount and Microsoft Project places it at the end of the task, which is in the prior week.
• A task is scheduled to start next week and has not yet started. You remove a predecessor dependency on the task, which reschedules the task to two weeks ago.

When these situations occur, the work is moved beyond the Actuals Thru date when you save the project to Classic PPM. A message appears warning you of the change.

If the above doesn't help, see also: MSP Integration Known Issues - Master KB