SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

I am a Project Server and SharePoint consultant but my main focus currently is around Project Server. I have been working with Project Server for nearly five years since 2007 for a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in the UK, I have also been awared with the Microsoft Community Contributor Award 2011. I am also a certified Prince2 Practitioner. This article has been cross posted from pwmather.wordpress.com (original article)

A quick blog post to highlight an issue and workaround for editing plans in PWA when using custom fields that use the inbuilt fields. This post uses Finish Variance as an example. The Finish Variance field doesn’t recalculate in PWA after making edits to plans, this only updates after changes in Project Pro. This post relates to the Finish Variance field but other fields will more than likely have the same issue.

In the screen shot below you will see a simple plan with 2 tasks that was created and baselined in Project Pro. There are 3 custom fields in the view:

Finish Variance RAG, the formula is IIf([Finish Variance] > 0, "Slipped", "On schedule")

Finish Variance (Calc) RAG, the formula is IIf([Task Finish Variance] > 0, "Slipped", "On schedule")

Task Finish Variance, the formula is ProjDateDiff([Baseline Finish], [Finish]) / 480

As you can see the Finish Variance and the Task Finish Variance values are currently the same and so are the 2 RAG fields.

Edit the plan in PWA and increase the task durations, for this example double the durations. Calculate the plan then save and publish the project. Refresh the page and you will see that the Finish Variance is incorrectly 0, the Finish Variance RAG is still green as this uses the Finish Variance field. The good news is that the custom field that calculates finish variance (Task Finish Variance) shows the correct values and the Finish Variance (Calc) RAG also shows the correct RAG.

To correct the Finish Variance values and the Finish Variance RAG, open the plan in Project Pro, press F9 to recalculate then save and publish. The Finish Variance default field now shows the correct values in PWA as does the Finish Variance RAG:

To get the RAGs to calculate correctly when editing in PWA you might need to create your own custom fields to replicate the calculations used on inbuilt fields. Obviously it would not be recommended to create too many task level calculated fields due to performance issues but hopefully that little workaround helps for key RAGs.