The resource is assigned outside … & difference between work and cost values

[Tomas Funa]

Hello,

I have a rather strange problem.
On a project we are using Microsoft Project Server 2010 with great number of work plans. Auto-publish from PSI runs twice a day.
Now to the issue:

Inside one of the plans,on one particular task, prior opening, we get an error message:
“The resource is assigned outside the original dates …”

There are two resources assigned to the task, both are enterprise resources of “work” type.

Task properties:
Type is “fixed duration” (effort driven)
Start date: August 3rd, 2017
Finish date: August 28th, 2017
Duration: 20 days
Constraint type: Start no earlier than
Standard calendar (project, resource, task)
No predecessor/successor defined

There are two resources assigned:
IT (work = 40 hours, cost 800 EUR)
Business (work = 44 hours, cost 900 EUR)
No actual effort is present on both resources
Resources are not over-allocated.

After a “normal” publish (using MSP client), everything on that task remains as described above.
However, after the PSI publish, the error message pops up, costs on both resources remain the same but work values are 0.
We tried re-creating the task (no success) and we even re-created the whole plan. The error still occurs.

Is there a particular reason for this kind of behavior?

Thanks in advance.

[Larry Christofaro]

Tomas, interesting issue. It could be some sort of corruption in the task but let me ask some questions for you to try.
1. Add the Actual Start column and see if there is a date. If so, remove it
2. Is any of the tasks manually scheduled. If so, change them to auto-scheduled
3. When you are recreating the task/project, are you selecting the entire task? If so, you are copying everything about that task, not just the columns you see. Try creating a new task from scratch and then deleting the original task.

Good luck, and let me know if any of the above finds an answer. Thanks…Larry

[Tomas Funa]

Thank you for such quick reply Larry.

Now, I went through your suggestions:

1. No actual start is present on the task (NA under the column)
2. All tasks in the plan are auto scheduled (I forgot to write that in my original message)
3. Both task and work plan were recreated from scratch – even names were re-typed and not copied

The strange thing about this error is that we have both these resources across 3 other plans and only this one (with that task) is having problems. I start to think that both resources are corrupt in some way, but I am not 100% sure.

Current workaround for me is switching task type to fixed work (due to task starting April ’17, there’s no need to lock the duration at the moment).

I’ll post an update if that helped (or if i find a solution).
Thank you again

[Larry Christofaro]

Tomas, very strange. That was going to be my next suggestion and forgot to add it. If switching it to fixed work fixes the problem, then try switching it back and see if the fix holds. Did you say that all tasks are fixed duration or just this one? If that doesn’t work then I would say it is a bug in the PSI.

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