milestone finish at the end of a day

[Bob Hillier]

How do I make a milestone finish at the end of a day (when it’s dependant task finishes mid-day)?
I know I can append 5:00PM to the finish date. This requires me to edit every milestone Finish date. Is there an easier way?

I’ve seen it suggested to use FF+1day or FF+1eday but this only delays the milestone by a day and does not complete it at the end of a day.

With MSP 2013 Professional.

Many thanks
Bob

[Carlos Santos]

Hi Bob

Try FF+4h.

Regards
Carlos Santos

[Daryl Deffler]

Bob
Some thoughts.
I’ve never seen a reason for a milestone to always schedule at the end of the day. So I’m curios about the driving need.
The FF+4H may work in this one specific instance, but if the predecessor task slips and now finishes at 10:00 AM the next day, FF+4H will now place the milestone at 2:00 PM. Thinking of a more dynamic method to do this…here’s what I’d try.

Create a Task Calendar where the available work is every day from 4:30 PM to 5:00 PM (pick your window times). Then assign this as the task calendar to the Milestone. This would ensure the milestone always schedules somewhere between the hours you’ve configured. This might provide the flexibility you need to support schedule fluctuations without manually hard coding delays

[Carlos Santos]

Daryl s solution is the correct way.

[Thomas Boyle]

Task calendars are indeed attractive, but they don’t work for milestones in my experience. 🙁

[Bob Hillier]

Thanks Daryl. Some fiddling and I have it working. This may be too complicated (remembering KISS) but I know how to do it.

Why? My schedule has several milestones indicating various work groups complete. I want the a subsequent work group to begin at the beginning of the next day following a milestone completion.

Thomas – Create and assign an end-of-day-milestone calendar with custom time 4:59 PM to 5:00PM and 5:01PM to 5:02 PM (It seems I must define 2 shifts). Make the milestone dependency a FS+1m. It seems I must have the FS+1m to make the milestone schedule within the end-of-day-milestone calendar time.

Bob

[Daryl Deffler]

Excellent!
Glad to hear you got it working.
My guess on the need for the second shift is for cases where the predecessor task ends at 5:00 PM. This allows the milestone to schedule in the same day and not be pushed to the end of the next day.

[Thomas Boyle]

Bob,
That’s very cool, out-of-the-box thinking. Congrats, and thanks for sharing.

Your solution works because of the lag. In MSP, relationship lags are always computed according to their successor’s effective calendar, so assigning the calendar to the milestone effectively shifts its predecessor lag into the end-of-day period. The milestone itself does not obey the calendar, but it must respect its predecessor relationships that do.

I can’t find a good reason for the double-shift. Combined with your 1-minute lag, one shift from 17:00 to 17:01 seems to work for me, but maybe I’m missing something.

[Author]

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