Recalculating deadlines

If you change something that affects an order's schedule, Gantway recalculates the item deadlines. But never without asking. The prompt appears for these changes:

• on a work step: date, duration or buffer (sidebar Orders → open the order → tab "Tasks" → expand the step) as well as a changed assignment of employees;
• on the order: the "Start date (optional)" in the edit dialog (tab "Overview" → "Master data" card → "Edit"), as long as the period is not yet calculated from the positions.

By default admins, planners and team leads may open the edit dialog. The delivery date in the same dialog, by contrast, triggers no recalculation: it is your promise to the customer, not a planning value. More under Delivery date.

First the preview, then the decision

Before every shift, "Recalculate deadlines?" appears with the concrete impact: "Your change shifts the deadlines of {n} item(s). Should the new deadlines be applied? Items already in progress or completed remain unchanged." Below it, every affected item is listed with its old and new time range. With "Apply deadlines" it happens, with "Don't move" everything stays put. If the change shifts nothing, no dialog appears.

If you change a single work step, the preview only calculates that step and its successors. A predecessor you moved by hand earlier stays where it is.

What is never moved

Three kinds of items are fixed points:

• Completed and in-progress: what is really running or has already happened is not re-dated.
• Pinned: items with the badge "Fixiert" (pinned). An item gets pinned when you drag its bar in the Gantt, when you resolve a conflict with "Verschieben" (move), or when you switch on "Termin fixiert" (date pinned) in the item card.

Everything open and unpinned moves along the dependencies. The mechanics behind it, and how to release a pin, are described in How the cascade pulls deadlines along.

Two special cases

• Start and planned end are calculated: once the order is scheduled and at least one item has a date, both fields in the edit dialog are locked ("Calculated from the positions."). You then move the whole order via its items, for example by dragging the order bar in the project overview Gantt, see Moving orders and tasks.
• Completed and canceled orders are off-limits: "Deadlines in completed or canceled orders cannot be recalculated."