Question on Project Status.

[Philip Balmer]

If I mark an item as a project and then insert subitems underneath it
which I start checking off as I complete them, the "project complete"
bar will start to show progress, but the status of the project remains
as "Unstarted". I think if you add subitems to something that is a
project, and then begin to check them off, the project status should
automatically change to "In Progress".

Phil

[Steve Wynn]

My understanding of the way that MLO works is it gives you a manual
Project Status so that you have more control over Projects.

For example if a Project was to be marked as Complete automatically
once all subtasks are complete, then it might not actually be finished.
There may be new tasks to add, reviews to do etc. So by having this
parameter set manually it gives you the control and not the system.

Same with the Started status etc, you may have done some prep work on
the Project but not actually properly started it as a Project if you
get what I mean?

So the manual setting of Project Status I understand is really a
feature of the software.

I personally prefer it this way, especially once a Project is complete.
Because it just makes me double check that the Project is done before I
do mark the Project status as complete.

Its also easy to see via the Project View the status of all the
Projects as well, so if I have started a Project but not updated the
status I can normally spot it within the list.

All the best

Steve

[Kevin Menard]

I agree. This is one of those things that really doesn't make a whole
lot of sense to me either. It's as if there's two, non-equivalent
representations of "in-progress." It gets even weirder when you click
the checkbox for a project, indicating that it is done, but the
project status may still be "Unstarted."

--
Kevin

[Kevin Menard]

On 7/25/06, Steve Wynn <stephe...@tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
>
> My understanding of the way that MLO works is it gives you a manual
> Project Status so that you have more control over Projects.
>
> For example if a Project was to be marked as Complete automatically
> once all subtasks are complete, then it might not actually be finished.
> There may be new tasks to add, reviews to do etc. So by having this
> parameter set manually it gives you the control and not the system.

While on the outset this seems to make sense, given that the master
project item is still around, you could use that as the indicator of
completion. As long as that item hasn't been "checked," the project
is still open and new subtasks can be added. It may even make sense
to introduce a "Pending Completion" status type for projects in which
all subtasks have been completed.

Anyway, the point is that the current way is unintuitive. Logically,
the progress bar is a graphical indication of project status.
Likewise, the text status is a meaningful interpretation of the
project status. The two should just be different, but equivalent,
representations of the same information.

--
Kevin

[MG]

I agree with you Kevin.

What if the second project status would be auto controlled by the application, when any of a project subtask is checked and pops up "Did the project started?"?

Answering such question would then change the project status to "in progress". And as we uncheck any task (the "first" to make it start) it's percentage bar would return to 0%.

The same behavior would be for the last task (the task which gives name to the project) "Did the project finished?", and answering "yes" its project status changes to "completed", that is 100%.

I would like MLO developers to tell something about this.

Is it good or not. If not why?

P.S. - This is a concern from 2006. What happened since then?

MG

[Dwight]

In the eleven years since the message to which you are replying, there has been a lot of discussion but not much change to the product. I think that the most concise way of describing this would be to say that nearly everyone agrees that it would be great if there were some automated handling of the project status, but nobody agrees exactly how that should work. A number of very nice ideas have been put forward but people disagree.