Nextian provides a robust tracking system for tasks, work orders and customer orders. Tasks are the fundamental level rolling up to work orders and finally orders.
- All tracking fields contain both date and time (although they are labeled as Dates in the user interface).
- All tracking fields are updated automatically and are read-only to non-administrative users.
Baseline Start & Completion times specify when a task should be started/completed according to the schedule in the work order template and the order start date.
Assume a template with the following three tasks (numbers in parentheses indicate duration, arrows dependencies):
T1 (1 day) → T2 (2 days) → T3 (3 days)
Also, assume that a work order is started on 1/15. In such a case the baseline dates (start – completion) will be calculated as follows (only date parts are shown for simplicity):
T1: 1/15 - 1/16 T2: 1/16 - 1/18 T3: 1/18 - 1/21
| Important | The baseline dates do not shift/change during work order execution, as their primary role is to keep track when tasks should be started/completed if execution was following the original schedule as defined in the template. |
Expected Start & Completion Date specify when a task is expected to start/complete taking current progress into consideration.
Let’s use the above work order and assume that it was started on 1/15 but on 1/16, the T1 has still not been started. In that case expected dates would be baselines shifted by one day:
T1: Baseline 1/15 - 1/16
Expected 1/16 - 1/17
T2: Baseline 1/16 - 1/18
Expected 1/17 - 1/19
T3: Baseline 1/18 - 1/21
Expected 1/19 - 1/22
Initially, expected dates are equal to baseline dates but are updated when:
- Any task in the order changes status.
- By the Work Order Calculation batch job (usually daily, according to the settings in Nextian Settings → Schedule → Update Work Orders Schedule.
The latter is required to advance expected dates when no user actions take place.
Actual Start & Completion specify when a task was actually started and completed.
Start & Completion Action Date specify when users took these actions in the UI.
Since users can specify start and completion dates when invoking Start and Complete actions on a task, the following might happen:
- Let’s assume that there are two tasks T1 → T2 (T2 depends on T1).
- Today, a user completes T1 specifying yesterday as the Actual Completion Date.
- The Ready On on T2 will be set to current time (today). In other words, there will be a gap between Completion Date on T1 and Ready Date on T2.
Action dates allow tracking / reporting on these situations.
Relationships between dates
The relationships between dates on a task can be visualized as follows:
Created Date <= Ready Date <= Start Date <= Completed Date <= NOW()
The following task flags can affect the relationship above:
- Start Automatically — bypasses the Ready state and immediately starts the task. This option makes most sense when a task is assigned to an individual in the work order template, to put it immediately in My Tasks as work in progress for that individual.
- Can Start Without Dependencies — by default, a task cannot be started until all predecessors have been completed. This option flags tasks that can be started ahead of schedule. This is useful for tasks that happen outside the flow (and are usually dependent on third parties) such as permit received, customer equipment returned, etc.
