plot minstart and actual start on chart.

[vijay]

I have a project with milestones provided by client.

After resource and task specification, I can see that the milestones are not met. and I need to take this data for discussion with the higherup and client.

If I specify the milestones with start/end specification, tj3 errors on the first violation and I cannot get the required charts.
If I specify the milestones with minstart/maxend tj3 prints a warning but there is no visual indication on the chart.
I can create two scenarios, but the resultant chart is confusing for an outsider.

Is there anyother way to display both specified and actual start/end date on the chart for milestones in a single scenario?
e.g. a black diamond for specified date and a red diamond for actual date?

[John Carey]

Hi Vijay,

First of all, I have to say that having two different dates for the same event in the same scenario seems counter productive to me.  The use case you describe is exactly why scenarios exist.

Secondly, the reason you are getting error messages and warnings is that you are not specifying milestones correctly.

From the TaskJuggler manual:

• You may not specify a duration, length, effort or subtask for a milestone task.

A milestone is just a marker in the project.  It can't have a duration or an effort, nor should it have any resources.  I have never attempted to specify milestones using minstart/maxend so I have no idea what behaviors to expect from TaskJuggler but I am not at all surprised that it gives you a warning.

If you must have two milestones for a single event in a single scenario, I would suggest you make a container task containing two milestones and  nothing else, one the planning date or as you are calling it, the specified date, the other being the actual date.  You can give each of those milestones different names inside the "Milestone" container task.  If you really want to change the way the reports look, you have the option to customize the report with CSS, although I don't think I would recommend that.  Instead, I would suggest you give these milestones flags and then make a separate report, probably a textreport that displays just those milestones.  You can even associate different alert levels (alertlevel)  and alert colors in the textreport.  That way, you can see the status of your project at a glance and you can drill down for more detail as you deem necessary.

I hope that helps somewhat.

All the best,

John