Project Dates ...

[Kelly Arrey]

Hi all,

1. I can see the Target Date for a project when looking at the project list, but I don't see it anywhere when I'm looking at the project details page, except in the project history? This seems like an oversight. There's a Start Date field in the right sidebar, but no Target Date?
   
   
2. If I enter a Target Date for a project, and later, on reflection, realize that it's too early in the project to set any kind of realistic target date, is there any way to clear that field?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

[Nir Nikolaevsky · Accepted solution]

Hi @Kelly Arrey

Adding to @Aaron Morris's answer

1. We also display a date for projects with an `At risk` (yellow) status. And as Aaron mentioned, we don't show it for Pending, Paused, or Completed.

2. It's worth noting that as part of our belief in healthy communication, any projects that's in progress (green, yellow, red) must have a target date. We know it can be tough (and wildly inaccurate) setting a target day when starting a new project, which is why we added "fuzzy dates". Fuzzy dates let you select a month or even a quarter as your target range. You can switch between days, months, and quarters from the date selector. As you get closer to being done you can update the date range and narrow it down to a specific day. 

But to answer your original questions, if you move the project status to pending or paused the target date won't show.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any more questions 

[Kelly Arrey]

Hi @Nir Nikolaevsky

Thanks for clarifying that. It seems like you've put a lot of thought into adding logic where none is needed.

Being able to see the date or clear the date are not radically wrong behaviours, but you've put effort into preventing users from doing either.

I get the part about "fuzzy dates", and that's really good. But the most fuzzy date is no date, and that's not an option. It doesn't make sense.

And the logic about hiding dates in certain statuses. Why? What possible advantage accrues to users from entering a date and not seeing it?  If you think that projects in the grey statuses should not have dates (I disagree, but..), then don't let users enter dates. If you let users enter dates, that implies that there's some value to entering that date - so why would you then hide the date? How can Atlas possibly know better than the user whether the date should be visible or not?

Thanks again,
Kel

[Aaron Morris · Accepted solution]

Hi @Kelly Arrey -- From what I can tell:

1. The target date is only displayed for On Track (green) and Off Track (red) projects.  Target date is not displayed for Pending, Paused, or Completed projects (all the grey statuses).  (Perhaps an oversight...perhaps by design.)
2. I also don't see a way to clear target date once it is set.

[Kelly Arrey]

Thanks @Aaron Morris. I'm guessing it's more of a design choice, since the simple thing would have been to just display the date irrespective of the status. Not a design choice that I subscribe to, but ...