Configuring Automatic Deadline Calculation

Automatic deadline calculation is currently only applicable when the Mark activity as deliverable option is selected when creating or editing the activity.

For additional guidelines and restrictions, see Writing Custom Algorithms.

When an automatically calculated deadline is set on an As Late As Possible (ALAP) activity, that deadline can affect the plan deadline. By default, any changes are automatically rolled up to the plan deadline. To prevent changes from automatically rolling up, set the following property in wt.properties. Once set, the plan deadline will only be affected when executing the Reschedule Plan action:

com.ptc.projectmanagement.plannable.propagateSchedule.OnDeadlineChange.enabled=false

When updating deadlines, Windchill ProjectLink formats time as HH:MM. Always set seconds and milliseconds as 00:000. If this is not set appropriately, you might see errors when importing plans from Microsoft Project that have ALAP activities with deadlines set.

For example, your site has a custom “Engineering Activity” and a custom “Documentation Activity.” Both types have automatic deadline calculation enabled.

The Engineering Activity has an automatic deadline that is triggered 5 days after the estimated start date of the activity. If the estimated start date changes, the deadline is automatically updated to reflect the new date.

However, the Documentation Activity has a Windchill document as its deliverable subject. The Windchill document has a custom “Release Date” attribute. All work on the primary content of the file must be completed 2 weeks before the release date. Therefore, the deadline for the Documentation Activity is automatically calculated from the release date set on its deliverable subject.

Unlike many other attributes, summary activity deadlines are not rolled up from its child activities. You can set a deadline on a summary activity that is separate from its child activities.

However, an administrator can change customize this behavior. For example, your site has a custom “Development Phase” activity. When used as a summary activity, its deadline is calculated as one day after the latest deadline

2. Construct an algorithm for the type of deadline calculation you want to use. An activity type can use one or both types of algorithms: