Custom Field - How to use a Task Item on a Project Item Custom Field

Andrew,

A simple solution might be to use a project-template pre-loaded with the project phases you desire, then add relevant tasks – and their dependencies - under each phase. 

As your tasks completion-percentages are loaded, it will be reflected in the overall phase completion-percentage.

-Jon

Thanks for the response Jon.  When you say project phases, I presume you mean Milestone tasks?  if that's the case, unfortunately that wouldn't really work for us as it would basically mean moving all tasks to be Milestones and then having a duplicate tasks underneath.

If there are any other ideas or suggestion that would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Andrew

Actually I meant tasks, not Milestones.  We built the following tasks into our Project Template that every Clarizen project comes pre-loaded with:

1) Initiating

2) Planning

3) Executing

4) Closing

5) Monitoring & Controlling (in our organization this task spans the entire project & is reserved for PMs to manage their time to the project)

Use whichever phases work best for your organization, or create several templates - one for each project "type" (i.e. - Infrastructure, Software Development, Construction, etc.)

Once PMs build their Work Plan and tasks are loaded under each task, these template-tasks (Initiating, Planning, etc.) then become "Parent Tasks" (Clarizen's term) which automatically calculate their percentage completion based on their Child Tasks' percentage completion.  Hope this helps!

Ah ok, thanks that makes sense.

So would I then be able to report on these Parent Tasks at an overall Project level on the Project Property Card essentially based on what the current task is do you know?  So for example, if I've completed all of the sub-tasks of 1) Initiating and 2) Planning, and I'm part way through the tasks on 3) Executing, I would want the overall project status to be 'Currently Executing'.

Thanks

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

I don't believe that is a function of the Project Property Card, but what you're looking for can be visualized in the Gantt view of the Work plan.  The Gantt bars representing each task darken according to percentage-complete.  So - in your example - the tasks representing Initiating and Planning would show as competely darkened, but the Executing bar would only be darkened the percentage it is complete.

More info on this (& screen-shots) can be found here: https://success.clarizen.com/hc/en-us/articles/205712708-Projects#interactive-gantt

Hope this helps!

Thanks for your help Jon.  Unfortunately that won't help, my ultimate goal was to then build a report on this custom field that allowed me to run a report for all current open projects for my team and see the stage of each project.

Thanks for your assistance though.

If anyone else has any ideas etc then please let me know.  I did come across this article that looks similar to my requirement but not sure how I would do that in my scenario..... https://success.clarizen.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/203991548-Custom-field-based-on-project-task

Has anyone else got any ideas for this?

Thanks

Andrew

Hi Andrew, 

I don't know if you found a way around this but I did something similar using roll up dates. I created a new roll up date field for each phase of the project and then tagged all tasks with an equivalent to the stage they were in. The field rolled up showing the minimum date, or start date of each phase, therefore making it possible to see which phase the project was in. I'm going to match it to a pick list next but at the moment I use a report to show on a graph the projects transitioning through the stages by month. Hopefully that helps you!

Hey Andrew,

Did you get a solution for this?

I am currently trying to achieve much the same thing but have hit some road blocks.

My plan is to have the existing field Project Phase update to reflect the current milestone and then have a custom field for the current task so that these can easily be reported on.

Thanks,

Nyssa