About Tasks

A task is either a project task A unit of work or collection of work associated with a project. or a checkpoint A zero duration task record, which is used to represent an event in the project such as a key decision, completion of a work package, completion of a deliverable or end of a phase. Checkpoint tasks have no relationship with PSA milestones.:

• A project task is a unit of work with a duration, but when synchronized with PSA project milestone, it defaults to a zero duration.
• A checkpoint is a zero-duration task that represents a key decision or stage in a project, but is not synchronized with a PSA project milestone.

Task Duration

When you create a task in Project Task Gantt, you can edit it in Salesforce. The initial duration of a project task is set to one day with the same Start and End dates. Initial duration is zero days for a checkpoint. If you create a sub-task in Project Task Gantt, the selected task becomes the parent task and inherits the duration of the new sub-task (one day).

The initial Start and End Dates of a new project task are applied as shown in this table.

Tasks Selected	Start Date Applied to New Task
One task	The selected task's Start and End Date.
One task without a Start Date	The earliest task's Start Date is the Start and End Date.
Multiple tasks	The last task's Start Date in the selection is the Start and End Date.
None	The earliest task's Start Date is the Start and End Date.
No project tasks in the project A collection of activities and related items to be managed over a defined time range, such as timecards, expenses, milestones and budgets.	Today's date is the Start and End Date.

When you edit the duration of a task in Project Task Gantt, the end date of that task is updated. When you edit the start and end dates of a task, the duration of that task is updated. The edited duration displays in days or displays in hours and minutes, based on what you select in the Duration field. Days display as #d where # is the numeric value for days. Hours and minutes display as #h:#m where # is the numeric value for hours or minutes. For example, 2d is two days. 1h:45m is one hour and forty-five minutes.

When you use Project Task Gantt to edit the dates of a predecessor task in a dependency relationship, the duration of the successor tasks is updated to reflect the type of dependency, e.g. Finish to Start. When you create or update a project task dependency, by changing the dependency type or lag This term is either a delay or an overlap between tasks in a dependency relationship. According to the dependency type, lag is added (or subtracted when a negative value) to the start or end time of the successor task., this causes date changes to cascade to all successor (dependent) tasks.

Note:

Project Task Gantt displays and formats numbers and dates according to the locale of your Salesforce user. If you have not changed this, the default locale of your Salesforce organization is used. We recommend that you set the same time zone on your computer and the Salesforce User Time Zone field. If you do not do this, Start and End dates of project tasks may change in ways that you do not expect. To change the locale of your Salesforce user, from Setup click My Personal Information | Personal Information.

Task Duration Units

You can view project tasks in duration units of hours or days. To change the duration units, see Editing Duration Details. A task's duration is recalculated accordingly when you change the unit from days to hours, or vice versa. If you change a task's duration unit, and then change it back again, the task's end time may be different. For instance, if the end time is 10:00PM in hours duration and you change to days and then back to hours, the end date is set to the default. For example, 5:00pm.

Changing the Duration Unit to Hours

The hour duration is calculated as the total time from the start to the end of the task. When you change a task's duration unit from days to hours, its start date and time, and end date and time, are unchanged. Non-working time and days are included in calculations. The work calendar is not applied when a task's duration unit is in days.

Changing the Duration Unit to Days

In day duration, you can't edit the task's start or end time. For a working day, when the task time differs from that of the work calendar, the task time is aligned to the time as specified by the work calendar. See Setting up Work Calendars to set up a work calendar. Non-working day start or end dates are moved to an available working day. Start dates are moved forwards, whilst end dates are moved backward to the end of the last working day. Non-working days are excluded from calculations.