Manual mode tasks
Please allow tasks to be scheduled in “manual mode” allowing for Project Managers to define start and finish date without auto calculating the effort.

Hi all!
For all new projects, you are now able to set Effort and Duration independently of each other for tasks with assignments. When Effort is set, Duration will not change.
39 comments
Comments are closed-
Craig knox commented
This is NOT at all completed.
THe ask is to have a manual mode, which this product does not. We want to turn off effort entirely.
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Jeremy Howes commented
Thank you for you work. But when I create a new project, set schedule and make any changes to resource assignments either duration or project hours, they both change automatically in PWA and Project Pro. I am seeing no changes from before.
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Nicolas commented
Hello,
Any update on the status of the correction asked? Without it this product is useless.... -
Anonymous commented
Can you share when the development is due to be completed please? We currently cannot migrate across to MS Project without this.
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Max commented
any ETA? please, add an option to manual schedule duration and work, we can't wait for this. Thanks.
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Michael commented
This isn't completed. It is like the Word team saying they were going to add spell check into Word and marking it complete saying "Complete! Completely works on single word headings". Might be true, but doesn't actually address the users need.
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Jeremy Howes commented
Auto calculating doesn't make sense for tasks with assignments when the task is set to Manual. We really need every thing to be manual in the schedule.
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Paul Doyle commented
Why only on tasks with no assignments? I have an existing project and duration and effort are still linked for tasks assigned, but I'd like to be able to now update effort without changing the start and finish dates.
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Kazoo60 commented
This idea is largely a duplicate of this one.
"M" - for additional information requirements I suggest reviewing the other link as well.
Thanks
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Kazoo60 commented
Ominous silence from Microsoft. When MS marks an item "COMPLETED", even if the actual requirement was completely missed by the analysts working on it, does it mean it will never be revisited again and a new post is required?
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Mikko Sorsa commented
I agree, this should not be marked complete.
Need effort to be decoupled from tasks with assignment AS well. (Like in Project Online manual schedule mode) -
thomaskre@viken.no commented
This should not be marked complete.
Need effort to be decoupled from tasks with assignment AS well -
Kazoo60 commented
I'm also confirming the feature is not complete. The original request from Flo stated the business requirement well I think. It is very common for resources to be shared across projects. I am not sure why the requirement was interpreted as not linking effort and duration only when no resources are entered. In our experience project plans are a lot more effective when resources are specified :-) One of the things I really like about P4W is its simplicity and I don't want to bring in every feature MS Project has but not being able to partially assign resources is a show-stopper for us and I suspect many others. Maybe include an option to make a task "Fixed Duration"?
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Anonymous commented
Hi
It's key to our use of the P4W that duration and effort needed is not linked. Our project members often use effort/time on multiple projects in the same duration.
Solving the issue when no resource is assigned to a given task does not fix our issue. Does it fix any issue at all?
Our need is to use P4W for resource management. This is not possible with the current setup.
Looking eagerly for a fix.
Thanks
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Chris Kegler commented
The calculation behavior only occurs when resources are assigned to a task, so I miss the point of the message above. As stated earlier, please keep it simple to my opinion. Let a user put in the start and end dates of tasks, the effort and assign the resources. No calculation needed at all to my opinion, just a intelligent Power Bi report showing me the outcome of all effort (in time, per resource). That will give enough insights to reschedule work, or duration or assignee. No blackbox please.
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Anonymous commented
I confirm, it's still unusable in the current state... Please do something...
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Flo commented
I confirm it is working for tasks with no assignements, but the issue still exist on tasks with assignements. So no, it's not completed sorry, it's still unusable in the current state sorry...
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Michael commented
1) Create a field that lets you flip between "auto schedule, auto resource or manual"
Auto Schedule = Present Behaviour for Project for the web
Manual = Turn off all calculations
Auto Resource = Calculate how many more hours or units are missing.Auto Resource Behaviour:
1) If duration, effort or existing units on the assignment are adjusted, calculate a task level field called missing effort and/or missing units (based on the calendar for the assigned person for now)
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2) Flag the task as requiring more resources (field or icon, don't care).. field would be better as it would let us trigger workflows.3) When a second person is added to the task, they are automatically assigned the missing work/units amount up to 100% of their availability. If there is still work left, repeat step 3 until you have enough people.
That will meet most use cases I think.
Add the same feature in the Project Desktop that matches this so that when you provide a way to save to project for the web they work the same ;-)
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Michael Nunes commented
“ We’ve completed this work – you should see that effort & duration are no longer linked on tasks with no assignments!” Think the problem is with assignments also
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Anonymous commented
Is it possible to see the roadmap for project for the web ? This development is not listed here :
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=Project