Milestones not showing correctly in Report

J. Craig Williams · 06/26/19

I'm told "this worked before"

I assume before means before the June 5, 2019 release of date formats.

Situation:

Project sheet has 0 duration task dependent on a 1 day task that ends at the end of the day (4:59pm according to the settings)

Project sheet Gantt view shows task ending at 07/08/19 4:59 PM (Monday evening) as a Milestone (diamond) (see Image #01)

Report shows the Milestone diamond at the beginning of July 8th, not the end (see Image #02)

A PDF of the Report does not even show the diamond, but rather a one day duration on TUESDAY (see Image #03)

Are these known issues?

-Craig

Update: I had assumed the change to the dates on June 5th was for display only but it won't be the first time that the Law of Unintended Consequences as been evident in Smartsheet release.

Changing the formatting has had no effect on the undesirable results.

Ezra · 06/26/19

I believe you need to set the duration as ~0

(tilda zero)

This tells Smartsheet that it is a one-day milestone

J. Craig Williams · 06/26/19

It should not be a 1 day milestone. It is supposed to be a 0 duration milestone.

From a PM perspective, I don't know what a 1 day milestone is.

Craig

Update: Using ~0 changes the behavior but it is still wrong (sheet still shows a diamond but the report shows the 1 day duration that does not match the PDF)

J. Craig Williams · 06/26/19

Clarification:

There are several issues here.

(1) A milestone (0 duration task) that occurs at the end of work-day will appear on the Sheet correctly but will show up on a Report as if it were the beginning of the day.

(2) For the person I am trying to help, the PDF generated from the Report is not currently showing the <diamond> icon for the 0 duration tasks. I can create a new project sheet and report that will show the icon.

(3) When I print to PDF the Report that has the <diamond> icons displayed, it will show the results that match the Sheet, not the Report.

For the purposes of this thread, (2) appears to be some sort of configuration or setup issue that I haven't tracked down yet but (1) and (3) appear to be bugs that are reproducible.

Craig

Chak Khiam · 06/27/19

When you put ~0 in the milestone, the following task will start a day after - rather than on the same day as the milestone.

Question: Could you help me understand if it is a manual input under Notes for Date and Time? My understanding is only the system generated date that will tag with a time. Date does not include time. Thank you.

Paul Newcome · 06/27/19

Would the sheet happen to be busy with a lot of conditional formatting, formulas, cross sheet references, etc...?

I've noticed that if I have too much going on in a sheet I will start getting erratic behavior.

Sometimes it's as simple as closing the sheet and then reopening it.

Other times something as simple as a "Save as New" worked.

J. Craig Williams · 06/27/19

Paul,

I'm pretty sure you know me in the 'Smartsheet expertise' sense.

Having people ask if there is too much functionality going on makes me imagine what a NASCAR driver with a car problem might say/think when the mechanic says 'well, maybe you make too many left turns'.

If the tool can't handle the self-imposed limits, then the limits are too high. Period.

There are still no tools available to the end-user to tell if the limits based on functionality are being approached or exceeded.

Added to that your work-around with 'Save As New' does not carry over to Reports unless the Report is built for Workspaces. There is no way in the API (still) to modify or create a Report. At least then there might be some tool I could build that would check / fix this sort of thing on the fly.

Craig

J. Craig Williams · 06/27/19

re: ~0

Thanks for the info. I will NEVER use this feature. The logic makes no sense.

If I have a 4 hour task on Wednesday and a 0 duration milestone afterwards, the milestone is mid-day on Wednesday. All subsequent tasks based on the milestone can start. That's kind of the way project management works. Yes, it might be a pain to need to deal with the 4 hour window but that's a PM's job.

When I change the duration to ~0, then the milestone now will be on Thursday (morning) and a 1-day task based on the milestone will be on Friday. 12 hours of potential working time has been 'lost' because of the ~0. Nope. Not for my projects.

In addition, ~0 and 0 are treated differently by the filtering mechanism and depending how they are setup, things may be overlooked. I did not check Report criteria, but I assume they are wrong too.

I'm sure this might screw up one or more of my parsing routines, but will wait for the DR to show up.

re: 07/08/19 4:59 PM

To get this, I used =[Actual Start]@row + "'

This shows the underlying actual value (sort of) of the Date column, not what is displayed.

System date columns are Date/Time columns. I am casting it to Text.

Craig

Paul Newcome · 06/27/19

"I'm pretty sure you know me in the 'Smartsheet expertise' sense."

That I do. Haven't seen you on here for a while. Hope all is well.

.

"If the tool can't handle the self-imposed limits, then the limits are too high. Period."

I agree completely. If you can create it, then it should be able to work right alongside everything else.

However... You and I both know that while this SHOULD be the case, it often is not, which typically ends up having less than desirable results (understatement I know, but I digress).

.

"Added to that your work-around with 'Save As New' does not carry over to Reports unless the Report is built for Workspaces."

I do know that if the sheet(s) and report are at least in the same folder, you can save the folder as new and the report will link to the newly created sheet(s). I know this is less than ideal considering it shouldn't be an issue, but...

.

Please know, I certainly was not and am not trying to insult your intelligence with my responses.

.

As a side note... I love your NASCAR analogy. It makes perfect sense and gave me a little chuckle.

.

EDIT: Save as new doesn't change a thing whether it be folder or report (although I'm sure you already figured that out). I set up a quick sheet/report with only the 4 rows shown in your screenshot and absolutely no formulas whatsoever and got the same exact results as in your screenshot.

Tried it a few times keeping it as simple as possible with the same results.

Looks like your comment in your original post about "unintended consequences" was unfortunately spot on.

J. Craig Williams · 06/27/19

re: Not here.

Because of reasons. I won't go into my state here. Well wishes are appreciated.

re: response.

I did not think you were trying to insult me. I tried the usual suspects before posting here and contacting support. They haven't gotten to my ticket yet.

re: NASCAR. Glad you liked it.

Craig

J. Craig Williams · 06/28/19

Thanks for the effort, Paul.

I had another test too. In that one that diamond milestone icon shows up (the original complaint from the person I am helping) but the Report and Sheet disagree on when it occurs.

There is definitely one or two bugs here.

I'll just leave this here without further comment: still no response from support@smartsheet.com

Craig

J. Craig Williams · 07/01/19

Some or all of my comments have been escalated. Waiting for further developments.

Craig

J. Craig Williams · 07/13/19

Update: Tier 3 support has escalated part of the ticket to the next level.

For the issue with the Gantt chart on a Sheet and Report being different, I was told this is BY DESIGN (emphasis mine)

To quote:

"A change in dependencies will move the milestone indicator on a sheet or report to the "end" of the day. However, because the dependency arrows do not currently show on reports, the milestone indicator will stay in the default location on a report, which is the "start" of the day."

Everyone that reads this, please submit an enhancement request.

Having a PM tool that gives different results for the 'truth' depending on how you view it, MAKES NO SENSE TO ME.

If I plan from the Sheet but give Reports to my colleagues (up and down the food chain) and we have different visual references, mistake and misunderstandings WILL occur, it is only a matter of time.

My rule of thumb is that if the source of data is error prone, I don't trust the data - which either means finding a different source or double/triple checking. I have enough to do without those extra tasks.

My $0.01 (you don't want to hear my other $0.01)

CraigS42 · 10/19/22

Hi,

Has there been any update on this? Still running into the same issues and it's 2022..

Tim Starkey · 08/17/23

For better or worse, something has changed. See this thread.

Milestones showing at start of next day vs. end of day — Smartsheet Community

I found my way to this one while I was searching to see if I missed a release note.

Milestones not showing correctly in Report

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