We are in the process of converting our production server to 2010. It is currently in v2010 in backward compatibility mode (BCM) with SP2. We have another test server that is operating in 2010 SP2 without BCM to test where we are going to be once we turn-off BCM.
All of our servers use Enterprise fields extensively to ensure consistency of views when opening a schedule in the client. These Enterprise fields control the ability to merge things like "NET" or "NLT" or "TBR" with dates and then shift the entire string left or right to deconflict text in crowded Gantt situations.
We have discovered in our Server that is not in BCM mode that all of our Enterprise fields that use formulas that use either Start or Finish have seen the formulas converted to use Scheduled Start and Scheduled Finish, respectively. Furthermore, for our Server that is in BCM we see this effect in the formulas for clients that are on 2010, but not the clients that are in 2007. What is weird is that when you review the formula as an administrator via Server Settings from the PWA, the formulas use Start and Finish, but when you view the same formula from a 2010 client you see Scheduled Start and Scheduled Finish. It is as if the client is anticipating the eventual global conversion of Start to Scheduled Start and Finish to Scheduled Finish. At this point, there is no impact to our users because Start=Scheduled Start and Finish=Scheduled Finish while in BCM. However, once we turn off BCM, all of our formulas are going to be converted and we are going to get users complaining that a milestone is shown in November but the date above the milestone is Feburary because there is a difference between Start and Scheduled Start for some manual task instances.
We have been trying to compensate for these changes by creating a new schedule view that gives different results depending upon the presence of the Placeholder flag being "yes". This only works so far and we are starting to conclude that we are going to need manually restore all of our formulas to use Start and Finish instead of Schedule Start and Scheduled Finish once we turn off BCM. My admin tells me that we have at least 41 formulas that are impacted.
Is there any way with configuration settings to prevent Microsoft from converting all of our formulas with the turn-off of BCM? That would be helpful.
Chris