MSP: ETCs are being zeroed out for tasks with no assignee

Products

• Clarity PPM SaaS
• Clarity PPM On Premise

Issue/Introduction

In the Microsoft Project (MSP) New Driver, ETCs (Remaining Work) are zeroed out in MSP for tasks without assignments. When you save a project back to Clarity, you'll also see that in Clarity, the ETCs display as 0 in Clarity for these tasks.

The behavior in the Legacy driver is slightly different, while ETCs  show as 0 for these tasks in Clarity, in MSP, the ETCs remain when opening the project back in MSP.

Environment

Release: All Supported

Component: Microsoft Project (MSP) Clarity Integration

MSP New Driver

Cause

This is working as designed in the MSP New Driver, as Clarity requires at least one resource assigned to the task to keep ETCs.

Resolution

In order to keep ETCs from being deleted in the MSP New Driver, for tasks without assignments, add a "dummy" role to the task, then once a resource is determined, the role can be replaced with the resource. 

To replace the role with a resource within MSP:

1. Take note of the ETC/Remaining Work on the task in MSP
2. Remove the role from the task (which also deletes the Remaining Work)
3. Add the Remaining Work back to the task in MSP
4. Assign the applicable Resource(s) to the task in MSP

Important: If the resource is allocated at 0% to the project, extra steps are required to ensure the ETCs are not lost if you are not mapping to Max % Load in Clarity. See KB: MSP: ETC missing for tasks with Assignments for more details. 

Additional Information

See also: MSP Integration known issues working with Clarity