Why This Matters
If your data date has changed and you're status-ing progress, you’ll need to decide how to handle activities that haven't started yet. The choice you make affects how those future activities are displayed on your timeline—and whether they “ride the data date” or are delayed appropriately based on progress.
Summary
Option | What It Does | Best Used When... |
Move Now | Pushes all Not Started activities whose predecessor is complete to data date | You are finished with your progress update and want remaining Not Started activities to move to the data date. |
Move Later | Delays successors based on new actual finishes | You want to assess delay impacts during a schedule update, without moving the remainder of your Not Started activities to the data date |
Move Now
When you select Move Now, Planera will shift all unstatused activities to start as soon as possible. For activities with no predecessor, or whose predecessor is complete, this Planned Start will be the data date.
Why use it:
Choose Move Now if you want the schedule to reflect that any work that could begin now will begin now, based on the current data date.
Keep in mind:
If you haven't updated your schedule recently, this can cause a lot of activities to line up at the data date—this is called riding the data date. It can be misrepresentative of planned start dates if you haven't finished updating actual progress since your last update.
Move Later
What it does:
The Move Later option allows you to preview the ripple effect of delays. Specifically, it pushes out the start of successor activities if their predecessor activities (that you've just statused) are finishing later than originally planned.
Why use it:
Use Move Later to maintain a more realistic schedule view during your update. It helps:
Delay successors appropriately based on the new finish dates of delayed tasks
Prevent unstarted tasks from automatically riding the data date
Maintain the logical flow of the project without artificially pushing work forward
This is especially useful when you’re still evaluating the impact of delays and want to avoid having unscheduled activities appear unrealistically late.
Best Practice Tip
Before choosing "Move Now", use the "inspect Activities" button on the dialogue box to check for activities that might have been missed during your update.
