10.1. The Difference between the Committed and OnGoing Status of a Task

Committed Tasks and OnGoing tasks are both workplan tasks. The Committed Status enforces a strict adherence to the Committed Start (CS) and Committed Finish (CF) dates assigned to a task when the workplan it belongs to is created (see What are the CS and CF dates that Appear on Certain Tasks).

vPlanner assigns a task the Committed status when a team manager creates a workplan after the team has identified the tasks that they are willing to do. When a task becomes a Committed task, vPlanner converts the Forecast Start (FS) and the Forecast Finish (FS) to Committed Start (CS) and Committed Finish (FF) dates and those dates will be frozen until the tasks status changes.

Team members are encouraged to discuss the status of the Committed tasks on a regular basis during the daily huddle. A user may choose to flag a Committed task to be OnTrack to communicate visually that it would finish when promised. The OnGoing status enables you to communicate to the rest of the team that the Committed Task is being worked on and that it would finish on time. It is useful during daily huddles to separate those tasks visually from other tasks that have not yet been discussed.

The rule for making a commitment ongoing is that the CF date is in the future. To flag the commitment as OnGoing you can click the OnTrack status button when the task is selected. The button will highlight when the CF is the future and you have permission to status the task. Once the button is clicked, the remaining duration will be reduced to the remaining number of business days from the current date.

Here are the rules for Committed and OnTrack task status in vPlanner V5 and their workflow implications.

A Committed task will hold its CF date unless it is constrained by another task that is not a Committed task.
A Committed task can be marked OnTrack if today’s date is >= its CS and <= its CF date.
When a Committed task is marked OnTrack, vPlanner will show the remaining duration from today’s date (at the time of marking it ongoing) to the committed finish date). It will hold its CF date. You do not need to keep updating the status as the CF date will hold but you can do so if you would like to simulate a count down. The count down will have no impact on the CF date as long as Today + Duration >= CF.
If you reduce the duration so that Today + Duration < CF the task will pull ahead.
An OnTrack task status can be rolled back to Committed and the Committed duration will be restored.
OnTrack tasks remain OnTrack when a workplan is closed (i.e. they hold their CF dates unless they were forced to pull ahead).
OnTrack tasks can be marked Completed or Not-Completed in-between workplans.
You will need to run the cleanup (found in the Status ribbon) to make adjustments to OnTrack tasks if they are marked Not-Complete but not if they are marked Completed before you can create a new workplan. This will allow you to unlock the status between workplans to that you can remove those tasks if needed from the next workplan.