Multiple Constraints for a person item seems to not work

[Jaran]

Platform: Windows
OS Version: 11
OS Language Setting: English system, Norwegian in-data

App Version

Version: 3.0.9
Application Shell: 3.0.9

Template: Embedded historical

I created one person and three events

For the person I added a birth date: 1906-03-25 and changed color and mark it as “ongoing” since I don’t have this persons death date.
duration for the Person shows 115 years and 6 month.

I created one event “Birth of Person”, added a date for start, since this is a milestone, the end date is the same as start date (i don’t know if the birth took more than 24 hours).

I create a relation from “Person” to this Event.
I then added a constraint to the Person Item with “Start equal to start of” - This works fine.
duration for the Person shows 115 years and 6 month.

Then I add a date 1910 to the start date of the second event “Census 1910”, this is also a milestone so the same date for end date.
Then I add a relation from “Person” to “Census 1910”.
I add a constraint to this Event “End Date is After End Date” - This works.
(“End date after Start dato” gave a warning for some reason).

Then I set a date for the third Event called “Estimated Death date of Person”
I create a relation from Person to this Event
I create a constraint for Person to this Event “End Date is equal to End Date” - This do not work.
duration for the Person shows 115 years and 6 month.

I try to set the constraint to “End Date is Equal to Start Date” - This do not work.
duration for the Person shows 115 years and 6 month.

I then try to remove the “ongoing”, but still no luck,
I get a constraint warning and when checking the End date for Person is set to 115 years, 6 months, 1 week, 5 days.

Printscreen 1 is with constraint “End = End”:

I also added a “Blocked by” for the Person, an tried both “Finish to Finish” and Finish to Start"
with Constraint none of the four “blocked by” worked
I then removed the relation and constraint to Event 2.

Without Constraint the “Blocked by” on the Person item worked for “Start to Finish” and “Finish to Finish”, But it should have been “Finish to Start” and “Finish to Finish” that worked.
It seems that the rules for the blocked by is somehow switched…

Printscreen with Blocked by “Finish to Start”:

Printscreen with Blocked by "Start to Finish:

Printscreen Blocked by “Finish to Finish”

Printscreen Blocked by “Start to Start”:

I then tried “Blocks” from the third Event, else same “settings” and without constraint to the Event.
Blocks “Start to Start”:

Blocks " Start to Finish":

Blocks “Finish to Start”:

Blocks “Finish to Finish”:

None of the rules actually do anything with the Person Item, the duration for this item remain the same 115 years, regardless of what type of block I use, and I can not set a constrain for the end date (Death date)

So it looks for me that regardless of what item you have selected the rules for “blocked by” and “blocks” doesn’t change?
My understanding is that when you have a item/object selected and set a constraint or a “blocked by” the selected item is the “FROM” item, i.e. the first item in a rule, and thereby we should use “Finish to Start” or “Finish to Finish” in this scenario.
Same goes for constraints …

If I set a Constraint of “End is equal to End of” Event 3 for the Persen here, the onloing is still active, and then use the resolve, I only have one choice that do something, and that is moving the active item (the person)
Printscreen with the constraint (here you can also see the duration be set to 115 years plus some):

Then if I try to use resolve, this is the result:

If I try “Start is equal to Start” in the same scenario this is the result:

And the duration (still “ongoing”) has changed to 15 years and some:

None of this respect the “Start Date” of the Person Item" nor the constraint set for the first Event…

do I misunderstand something major here?
Shouldn’t it be the “ongoing” end date that get moved, not the start date set either directly or indirectly through a constraint from another Event?
If I “lock” the date with the “ongoing” on, nothing happens, none of the “resolve” works.

[jess]

There are a couple of things that are happening here:

1. The constraints system shouldn’t be used to adjust the end date of an “ongoing” item. Ongoing events are used to mark items that are still going, but if a constraint says that their end date equals another end date, they are no longer ongoing. This will be why you keep seeing warnings from the constraints system with regards to the end dates and why the resolving is not working.
2. However, even if you had ongoing turned off, the current system is not set up to automatically adjust duration of events based on constraints. Therefore, it would adjust the start date of either the person (so moving their birth date) or the estimated death event, which isn’t what you want. The reason that the duration is currently not changed is because the constraints system is common across all templates, and for project management especially (where constraints are commonly used) it can be dangerous to change durations for events automatically, and in this situation changing the start date is what is wanted. We realise however that this causes problems for death dates for people, as this is another common area to use constraints and therefore are going to be looking into how we can get this working for this purpose.
3. In regards to Blocked by, Start to Finish etc. it looks like it is working as intended. In your example, you have the Person blocked by the estimated death date event This means that the person can’t start/end before the estimated death date does. They effectively must come after it. So in your first image for Blocked by Finish to Start, this means that the person can’t start before the estimated death date ends (which is not true in the current setup, which is why there is a conflict). I believe the misunderstanding comes from the fact that the first rule item (eg. Finish) relates to the first item in the chain of events. When something is blocked by another event, it is the second event in the chain. (eg. A is blocked by B, means the order must be B → A). Therefore if something is “Blocked By” an event, it relates to the second item in the rule, if something “Blocks” something, it relates to the first item in the rule.

[Jaran]

@jess

he constraints system shouldn’t be used to adjust the end date of an “ongoing” item. Ongoing events are used to mark items that are still going, but if a constraint says that their end date equals another end date, they are no longer ongoing. This will be why you keep seeing warnings from the constraints system with regards to the end dates and why the resolving is not working.

Problem is the same if I turn of the “ongoing”, then the "End Date is set to the date of “today” (ongoing), and I can still not adjust the End date with constraints.

Some times you have a event that is ongoing and then later find a event that is an evidence of an end date… So it should work when I turn off the "ongoing.

@jess

We realise however that this causes problems for death dates for people, as this is another common area to use constraints and therefore are going to be looking into how we can get this working for this purpose.

It cause problems for any Event where you later find that another event is the end of the current event…
It’s often the same in Project management to… You plan a project and in a revision of the project, you find that you need to add something, maybe a different supplier, more supplies etc. or you find that one event will finish before planned date and that another event needs to be finished at the same time… to see how many resources you need to add to manage that, the end date needs to be moved, if not, you need to add one and one resource until the end date has moved enough…

Answer 3.
thanks for the clarification, as long as I know how you have set it up, I will have no problems with it…
My thinking is the opposite, when something is blocked by, it is either the start or finish day, and it is blocked by the second event, i.e. finish of A to Start/finish of B.

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But the two other answers force me to not use either the auto move, nor the constraint… and since there is no relation lines between events without constraints, this will be problematic visually.
for me moving the end date of Events is the majority of cases…
I often have the Event Start in a document/newspaper, but it can take weeks to find the End Date, and add an Event/Object for the end date, it can be another Event, a document or anything in between, but the start date should nearly never move…
i.e. a ships voyage, You can find the start date in a newspaper, and the end date in some crew list, and since this is two different sources, I need to register it as two event…
I could use parent etc. but since it is not possible to have multiple parents, this can cause other problems, i.e. not possible to structure the items in an hierarchy without using duplicates… and using duplicates when you may have hundreds of them clutter the timeline…

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Well, this just mean more work, but I will figure out another workaround …