Recalculate project timelines
Recalculating Timelines allows managers to see how different factors related to the project are impacting the project鈥檚 timeline. A project鈥檚 timeline refers to planned and projected dates.
Making changes to schedules, personnel time off, and other items outside the scope of a project do not impact the project timeline immediately. The project timeline is impacted when the timeline is recalculated. External influences do not take effect on your project until the recalculation occurs.
This article describes the ways in which timeline recalculation happens.
Automatic timeline recalculation happens without special access for any of the users involved in working on the project. In addition, you can manually recalculate the timeline.
Access requirements
| table 0-row-2 1-row-2 2-row-2 3-row-2 layout-auto html-authored no-header | |
|---|---|
| 51黑料不打烊 Workfront plan | Any |
| 51黑料不打烊 Workfront license |
Standard Plan |
| Access level configurations |
Edit access to Projects System administrator to recalculate timeline for all projects in the system |
| Object permissions | Manage permissions to a project |
For more detail about the information in this table, see Access requirements in Workfront documentation.
Automatic recalculation
By default, project timelines are automatically recalculated daily when the project scope changes or every night. The Workfront administrator determines whether to automatically calculate timelines every night or with every scope change by managing the Timelines settings in the Project Preferences area of Setup. For more information, see Configure timeline recalculations for projects.
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If the timeline of a project is longer than 15 years, the automatic recalculation is disabled for that project and you can only select a Manual update type. If you change the dates on the project to less than 15 years, you must manually recalculate your timeline one time before it is calculated automatically.
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For the Preview and Custom Refresh Sandbox environments, the nightly recalculation is disabled and the project timelines aren鈥檛 recalculated automatically. You must manually recalculate the project timeline for the Preview and the Custom Refresh Sandbox environments.
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If a project is complex, the automatic timeline recalculation might not occur.
An example of a complex project might be a project with multiple dependencies, large number of tasks, several cross-project predecessors, or multiple task indentations.
Workfront places a warning to the right of the project name on the project page to advise users that the project timeline must be recalculated manually. Only users with Manage permissions to the project can manually recalculate the timeline.
Automatic recalculation of project timelines automatic-recalculation-of-project-timelines
Workfront recalculates timelines daily only for projects where all of the following conditions are met:
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Have a Current status.
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Project update type is set to Automatic or Automatic and On Change.
For information, see Project Update Type overview.
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Have a Last Update Date within the past 3 months. A Workfront administrator can change this default functionality. For more information, see Configure timeline recalculations for projects.
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Last calculation date of the project timeline isn鈥檛 within the current calendar day. This means that the last calculation date of the project timeline is before 00:00 of the current day.
You can configure how frequently the timeline for your project is updated. When the project timeline is updated, it鈥檚 recalculated based on changes made to the project.
For information, see Select the project Update Type.
Actions that trigger an automatic recalculation of project timelines actions-that-trigger-an-automatic-recalculation-of-project-timelines
Various scope changes in the life of a project automatically recalculate the project timeline, including the following actions:
- Updating task status.
- Moving a task to a different project.
- Updating the Planned Date or Planned Completion Dates of the tasks.
- Updating the Duration Type, Task Constraint, or the number of assignees on the tasks.
- Updating task predecessor relationships.
- Adding an approval to a task that also adds time to the Planned Completion Date of the task.
For more information about approval settings, see Configure global approval settings.
Manual recalculation manual-recalculation
As a project owner, you can manually recalculate the timelines for individual projects. The Workfront administrator can manually recalculate all timelines in Workfront.
Recalculate timelines for individual projects or in bulk recalculate-timelines-for-individual-projects-or-in-bulk
You can recalculate the timeline of a project in Workfront from the project page or from a project list or report.
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Go to the project you want to recalculate the timeline for and click the More icon
Or
Go to a project list or report and select one or several projects, then click the More icon
note tip TIP Depending on the complexity of your projects, we recommend not selecting a large number of projects when recalculating their timelines in bulk to ensure optimum performance. Some things that could make a project too complex might be multiple dependencies or assignments, or a large number of custom fields. -
颁濒颈肠办听 Recalculate Timeline. The timeline recalculates and a success message displays on the screen.
note tip TIP Before the timeline recalculation is finished, some planned or projected dates might display as dimmed. This means that the recalculation is not yet finished, and the dates are subject to change.
Manually recalculate timelines in bulk in the Edit Projects box manually-recalculate-timelines-in-bulk-in-the-edit-projects-box
You can manually recalculate the timelines of several projects by editing them in bulk.
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Go to a list of projects.
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Select several projects in the list, then click Edit.
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Click Settings, then select Recalculate Timelines.
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Click Save Changes.
Recalculate timelines for all projects in the system (Workfront administrators only) recalculate-timelines-for-all-projects-in-the-system-workfront-administrators-only
Workfront administrators can run the Recalculate Timeline diagnostic to immediately recalculate all timelines in the Workfront system. This allows all Project Managers to see the influence of external changes immediately on both planned and projected dates.
For more information about recalculating timelines for the entire Workfront site, see the section Recalculate timelines for the entire Workfront instance in Configure timeline recalculations for projects.