For your reports you will want to use conditional formatting for Planned Start, Actual Start and Current Date. The Status field isn't going to give you the detailed breakdown of your requirements. You will create a calculated status field on your report that represents the color/textual status of your requirements based on your conditions, rather than use the native Task Status field.
Task Status logic can not be modified other than placing a task on hold. Other than that it is driven by dates and % complete.
matilda:- If a Task has a status of 'Overdue' putting an actual start date on it, even when it is the same as the planned start, does not update it back to In Progress. Once Overdue it can only move to Completed?
No, a task is overdue so long as today's date is beyond the planned finish and % complete is less than 100.
matilda:
- If a task is Status 'On Hold' , putting an actual start date on
it, one that is after the planned start, does not change the Task to
'In Progess'. Once On Hold can you only change a Task to 'In Progress'
by using the 'Checked Item Actions' (such as 'Mark as In Progress(50%
)' )?
Percent or hours indicate that work is being done, or Actual Finish (indicating 100%). Start date does not drive these elements.
matilda: If a task is On Hold and I give it an actual finish date (even if
I put a future date), daptiv updates it to Completed status, it seems
Completed over-rules On Hold and it doesn’t care if the task isnt
actually yet completed (finish date yet to occur). In this case it
could be argued that it is still In Progress (as finish date in future)?
I suppose our Finish Date is a dummy field in respect to the current date, and that if there is a date entered, the logic considers the task to be finished (since that's the whole point of Actual Finish). Otherwise you effectively have 2 planned finish dates in your scenario.