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Quote:
Originally Posted by sbwoodside View Post
Wow, I don't really understand that. Let me put it this way. I want all my new tasks to be automatically inserted starting today, not at the beginning of the project. How can I do that?
Sorry about my explanation, rereading it I admit that it's confusing. Allow me to try again. :-) To answer your question, there is currently no way to set a task to automatically start on today's date. We have a request for this in our feedback database so I'll be sure to add a vote to it for you.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sbwoodside View Post
To be honest, I can't even think of a reason why anyone would enter a new task and have it backdated at all.
As to why OmniPlan will create a task "in the past", here's an example of how the current "As early as constraints allow" schedule setting in OmniPlan works. This schedule setting is located in the "Task : Information" inspector.

Let's say you're creating a new OmniPlan document for a future project and the start date for the project is set for January 1st, 2050. If you create a new task today, the task will not be scheduled to start today. It will be scheduled to start on January 1st, 2050 because the project start date is the only constraint present and since the task is scheduled to start "as early as constraints allow", OmniPlan sets the start date of the task to January 1st, 2050.

Now, let's say we're adding a new task today in a project that has already been started. The behavior stays the same. when you create a new task it will be scheduled at the project start date because that's the only constraint that applies to the task.

This current behavior brings up questions about the new task like:
  • Does this task need to start today because it depends on a specific staff member's availability?
If it does, then the task's scheduling can be adjusted by assigning the staff resource to the task and letting OmniPlan set the schedule based on the staff resource's available working hours.
  • Was a prerequisite task supposed to be finished first before work could begin on this new task today?
If so, then you would need to create a "finish to start" connection between the prerequisite task and the newly created task. When you create the connection the new task will automatically be rescheduled.
  • Is this task a last minute addition and doesn't require a prerequisite task or a specific resource's available work time?
If this is the case, you would need to enter in today's date as the start constraint date in the "Task : Information" inspector to tell OmniPlan that this task can not start earlier.

One method we've been considering to address this desire to have a task start today instead of the project start was to set the task's start constraint date to today's date as a default. That way the new would also be scheduled on "today" by default and if you were to drag the task around the gantt chart, OmniPlan would set the start constraint date on the fly after each drag.

What do you think about this?

Last edited by skwirl; 2008-04-21 at 12:03 AM..