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Duration, remaining work and actual start

All plans Project Member

A start date and a due date say when a task sits on the calendar. They do not say how long it was meant to take, how much of it is left, or whether it actually began when it was supposed to. Three more fields answer those, on every task, on every plan.

If you have used Microsoft Project or Primavera P6, the vocabulary is theirs on purpose: original duration, remaining duration, and actual start.

Where to find them

Section titled “Where to find them”

Open a task, then open More in the panel on the right. They sit together under Schedule:

  • Duration (work days), what the task was planned to take.
  • Remaining (work days), what is left of it.
  • Actual start, the day work really began.

They are hidden on a milestone, which has no duration by definition.

A work day is your calendar’s day

Section titled “A work day is your calendar’s day”

You type and read work days. A work day is as long as the project’s working calendar says it is, which is 8 hours unless an administrator has changed it, and the form says so underneath the fields. Onplana stores working minutes and does the conversion, so a team on a 7 hour day and a team on 8 both type “3 days” and both mean their own three days.

Counting is inclusive, the way every schedule tool counts it: a task starting Monday and due Friday is 5 work days, not 4. Non-working days in the middle are skipped rather than counted.

Duration and the dates keep each other honest

Section titled “Duration and the dates keep each other honest”

Duration is not a note you keep by hand. It and the two dates are a pair, and editing either one updates the other:

  • A new task gets its duration from the dates you gave it.
  • Change the duration and the due date moves to match.
  • Change a date before work has started and the duration is recalculated from the new span.
  • Once work has started, the duration you planned stops moving. A date change from then on is a change to the schedule, not a correction to the plan, so what you originally committed to stays on the record.

That last rule is the point of the whole field. A task that was planned at 5 days and now runs to 12 should still say 5 somewhere, or there is nothing to compare the slip against.

Remaining follows progress until you say otherwise

Section titled “Remaining follows progress until you say otherwise”

Remaining starts equal to the duration and then tracks progress on its own: a 10 day task at 40% shows 6 days left. Type a number and yours wins, which is what you want when the percentage and the reality have parted company. Finishing the task drops it to zero.

Actual start is stamped for you

Section titled “Actual start is stamped for you”

The first time a task leaves To do, or first gains progress, Onplana stamps Actual start with its start date. You can edit it afterwards if work really began on a different day, and moving the task back to To do at 0% clears it again, because then it has not started after all.

Actual start is what the Baseline view compares against to tell you a task began late or early. See Capture and compare baselines.

The project status date

Section titled “The project status date”

A project can carry a Status date: the day the schedule is being read as of. Open the project, choose Edit project, and set it beside the other dates. Leave it empty and Onplana uses today.

It is the same idea as Status date in Microsoft Project and Data date in Primavera P6, and it does real work rather than sitting in a field: remaining work on a task that has started is counted forward from the status date. Set it to last Friday and the schedule answers “where does this land given what was true on Friday”, which is the question a weekly report is actually asking.

Older projects already have these

Section titled “Older projects already have these”

Existing tasks were filled in once when the fields shipped, imported ones included, so a project created before then still carries durations. You do not have to open anything to make it happen.

Agents and the API

Section titled “Agents and the API”

An agent can read and write all four. create_task and update_task accept originalDurationMinutes, remainingDurationMinutes and actualStart, update_project accepts statusDate, and the rules above are applied to an agent’s write exactly as they are to yours. Durations there are in minutes, not days, because the API stores what it stores; describe_schema spells out the coupling.

FAQs

Section titled “FAQs”

Why did my due date move when I typed a duration? That is the coupling doing its job. A duration and a span of dates cannot disagree, so changing one changes the other. If you meant to move the dates instead, edit the dates and the duration follows.

Why did my duration stop updating when I change dates? Because the task has started. Before work begins, a date change is you still planning. After it begins, it is the schedule moving, and the planned duration is kept so you can still see what was planned.

A task shows a duration but no bar on the Gantt. A bar needs both a start and a due date. A duration on its own is not enough to place it on a timeline. See Plan on the Gantt chart.

Can I hide these fields? They live under More and stay closed until you open them, so they are already out of the way on a task nobody needs them for.

What is one work day for my team? Whatever your project’s working calendar says, and the task form prints the number underneath the fields so you never have to guess.

Section titled “Related”