Read the data freshness score

All plans Project Member

A dashboard whose data is six weeks old renders exactly like one updated this morning. That is the point at which people stop trusting the reports and go back to keeping their own spreadsheet.

Data freshness is the answer. It is the share of a project’s live work that has been touched in the last 7 days, and it sits beside progress, overdue and blocked as the fifth dimension of the project score.

What counts as touched

The later of two things: the last time the task itself changed, and its newest comment. So a comment on a task counts as attention, which is usually what it is.

The task’s own timestamp also moves on system writes, such as a parent picking up a child’s progress. That nudges the number slightly towards fresh, which is the safe direction for a signal whose job is to catch work nobody has looked at: a system write only ever happens because somebody touched something next to it.

What counts as live work

Freshness is a claim about work that should be moving, so the set it measures is narrower than “everything not done”:

In progress, In review and Blocked always count, whatever their dates.
To do counts once it has started, meaning its start date has passed. With no start date, it counts once its due date is inside the window.
To do with no dates at all is backlog and is excluded. Otherwise an old wishlist would drag every project down forever.
Done tasks and milestones are excluded. A milestone waiting for its date is legitimately untouched.

A project with nothing in play, or one that is finished, shows no score at all rather than a zero, with “No work in play to assess.”

The Untouched badge

A task in play that passes the 7 day mark gets an amber Untouched N days badge on its row, in the project task list and in My Work. The tooltip says why it is there. It is the same rule as the score, one task at a time, so you can go straight to what is dragging the number down.

Where the number appears

The project scorecard on the project page, and its score popover.
Reports: the dimension charts, the governance columns, and as a column you can add in the report builder.
The scheduled project summary email, as its own line.
The schedule health check, which raises an issue below 80% of live work touched, and treats below 50% as high severity.
The Data Freshness widget on a custom dashboard.

Add Data Freshness from the Projects and Sprints group when building a custom dashboard. It lists your least fresh projects first, each with how many tasks are stale and which one has gone longest untouched, so the first row is where to start.

Projects with nothing in play are listed as quiet rather than scored, which keeps a finished or not-yet-started project from sitting at the top of a list of problems. Set how many projects it shows, from 1 to 20.

FAQs

Why is a busy project showing low freshness? Busy is not the same as current. The score only looks at work that is in play, so a team shipping plenty of new tasks while three old ones sit untouched in progress still reads low, which is the intent.

Why does my project have no score? Nothing is in play. Everything is done, or everything left is undated backlog. That is reported rather than scored, because a zero would read as a problem.

Does closing a stale task fix it? Yes, and honestly so. A done task leaves the measured set, so the score reflects work that is genuinely still open.

Can I change the 7 day window? Not today. Seven days matches the weekly status and sprint cadence most teams already run.

Does commenting count, or only editing? Both. The newest comment counts as a touch, which is why a discussion on a task keeps it fresh.

Manage project status and progress, the other project-score dimensions
Build a custom dashboard, where the widget lives
Work with tasks, the rows the badge appears on

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