Properly managing your project's timeline begins with creating well-defined schedule items, which serve as crucial building blocks for organising, tracking and reporting on project progress. 

In this article, we will describe the expected behaviour when creating and updating project schedule items, which will vary dependant on whether you have the 'include weekends' toggle on or off - you can find out more about the include weekends toggle here.

Creating a New Schedule Item (With Exclude Weekends On)

With exclude weekends turned on, there are a few rules that will apply in order to ensure for more accurate project effort planning on the schedule. The following rules apply to new tasks created from the Gantt view and via bulk edit functionality:

    In Gantt View

• New schedule tasks cannot be created to have start or end dates fall on weekends, you will not be able to save the schedule item if the start and/or end date fall on weekend dates.
  
  
  
  

    In Bulk Edit

• If schedule items are uploaded with StartDate falling on a weekend, StartDate will move to the next working day, EndDate will move with this, retaining the Effort (if no effort is stated in the bulk edit file upon upload, effort will be calculated by the system by measuring the number of working days between StartDate and EndDate).
• If schedule items are uploaded with EndDate falling on weekend, the EndDate will be pushed back to the Friday before the weekend upon upload, if Effort allows. As an example, If schedule item Effort is 5 days and begins on a Monday and EndDate is set to a Saturday, the EndDate will move back to the Friday before. If schedule items Effort is 5 days, task begins on a Tuesday and is scheduled to end on a Saturday, the task EndDate will be pushed to the next Monday to factor in the effort.
• If any schedule items are uploaded with an EndDate falling on a weekend, the EndDate will be automatically adjusted to the Friday before the weekend, as long as it is possible to do so based on the Effort required. For instance, if a schedule item has an Effort of 5 days and starts on a Monday, but the EndDate is set to a Saturday, then the EndDate will be moved back to the preceding Friday. Similarly, if a schedule item has an Effort of 5 days, begins on a Tuesday, and is scheduled to end on a Saturday, the task's EndDate will be pushed to the following Monday to account for the required effort.
• When doing a Bulk Edit upload, the StartDate and Effort columns are always taken as the primary data, before EndDate. If EndDate is not equal to StartDate plus Effort,  then this is disregarded and the system will generate a new EndDate.
• If EndDate and Effort columns are populated - StartDate is calculated by taking EndDate minus Effort. 
• If StartDate and EndDate columns are populated - Effort will be calculated based on the number of working days excluding weekends.

Updating an Existing Schedule Item (With Exclude Weekends On)

Bulk Edit

• When doing a Bulk Edit upload, the StartDate and Effort columns are always taken as the primary data, before EndDate. If EndDate is not equal to StartDate plus Effort,  then this is disregarded and the system will generate a new EndDate.
• If StartDate and Effort columns are populated - EndDate is calculated by taking StartDate plus Effort. 
• If EndDate and Effort columns are populated - StartDate is calculated by taking EndDate minus Effort. 
• If StartDate and EndDate columns are populated - Effort will be calculated based on the number of working days excluding weekends.
• If StartDate falls on a weekend, this will be changed post upload to fall on the next working day. 
• If EndDate falls on a weekend, this will be changed to fall on the Friday.

Gantt View 

• When moving schedule items (moving the start date, keeping the same effort) schedule items cannot start on weekends and will instead start on the next working day. This also applies when expanding/shrinking the task. 

• When moving schedule items (moving the start date, keeping the same effort) schedule items cannot end on weekends, and dependent on the  effort, it will move the end date to the closest Friday. This also applies when expanding/shrinking a task.

• If you drag and drop tasks which span over weekends, for instance if a 4 day task is dragged and dropped to start on a Friday, the end date of the task will be Wednesday, as the task's duration is 4 working days and therefore, Friday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Note: If Include weekend is turned on, New tasks will have an effort/duration that includes days in the weekend as working days and for Existing tasks the effort/duration will be adjusted to factor in the additional weekend days. 

Creating a New Schedule Item (With Include Weekends On)

With include weekends turned on, there are a few rules that will apply in order to ensure for more accurate project effort planning on the schedule. The following rules apply to new tasks created from the Gantt view and via bulk edit functionality:

In Gantt View

• New schedule tasks can be created to have start or end dates fall on weekends, you will be able to save the schedule item if the start and/or end date fall on weekend dates.

In Bulk Edit

• When doing a Bulk Edit upload, the StartDate and Effort columns are always taken as the primary data, before EndDate. If EndDate is not equal to StartDate plus Effort,  then this is disregarded and the system will generate a new EndDate.
• If EndDate and Effort columns are populated - StartDate is calculated by taking EndDate minus Effort. 
• If StartDate and EndDate columns are populated - Effort will be calculated based on the number of working days including weekends.
• Any items which are uploaded with StartDate or EndDate falling on weekends will be remain unchanged upon schedule upload.

Updating an Existing Schedule Item (With Include Weekends On)

Bulk Edit

• When doing a Bulk Edit upload, the StartDate and Effort columns are always taken as the primary data, before EndDate. If EndDate is not equal to StartDate plus Effort,  then this is disregarded and the system will generate a new EndDate.
• If StartDate and Effort columns are populated - EndDate is calculated by taking StartDate plus Effort. 
• If EndDate and Effort columns are populated - StartDate is calculated by taking EndDate minus Effort. 
• If StartDate and EndDate columns are populated - Effort will be calculated based on the number of working days including weekends.
• If StartDate or EndDate fall on a weekend, this will be retained upon upload.