The Schedule tab of the Task Details and Update Task pages enable the communication of important date information for each task:
Transaction Dates: Indicate start and finish dates for financial transaction purposes. Transaction dates only appear on workplans that share their structure with a financial structure.
Transaction dates are entered manually and can be updated at any time for all tasks.
Scheduled Dates: Indicates when work on the task is scheduled to start and finish. Scheduled dates can be updated for lowest-level tasks.
Baseline Dates: The dates against which the current schedule can be measured. Baseline dates reflect the scheduled dates within the designated baseline workplan version. For more information about designating a baseline workplan version for your project, see: Versioning a Workplan.
Actual Dates: Indicate when work on the task actually started and finished. Actual dates are typically updated by task managers when they enter progress.
Estimated Dates: Indicate when work on the task is likely to start and finish. Estimated dates are typically updated by task managers when they enter progress.
Early Dates: Indicate the earliest possible dates that the uncompleted portions of a task activity can start based on the logic of its activity sequence and any schedule constraints. Early dates can apply to projects as well. Early dates can change as the project progresses and you make changes to the project plan.
Late Dates: Indicate the latest possible dates that uncompleted portions of an activity can finish based on the activity sequence and any schedule constraints.
With the exception of transaction dates, early dates, and late dates, all date information automatically rolls up from lowest level tasks to summary tasks.
You can also set up external task scheduling attributes for use by third party project scheduling software such as Microsoft Project. Third party scheduling applications can use attributes such as Task Type, Constraint Type, Constraint Date, Free Slack, and Total Slack to determine how tasks are scheduled in relation to each other on an externally generated project plan. The third party attributes are computed in the external scheduling system and displayed in Oracle Projects.
Note: The Task Type external task scheduling attribute is different from the Task Type attribute used for tasks in Oracle Projects. This Task Type attribute is a scheduling attribute that is stored for external scheduling software. When you change the Task Type external scheduling attribute for a task, it only impacts the way that the external scheduling software schedules the task or tasks involved.
For more information about using Microsoft Project as a third party tool, see: Microsoft Project Integration, Overview of Microsoft Project Integration.