[2007] help needed: Timesheet managers can't approve timesheets

[Pawel]

Hi,

I posted that problem already once, but did not find much help. I corrected
some configuration issues that may have had some influence, but that did not
help either. I'll try to state it clearer now, maybe some of you Dear Readers
will give me some idea of what I am doing wrong.

** Role configuration: **
I have a couple of teams in OPS. The leaders of teams act as project
managers (create projects, assign tasks) but also verify the timesheets of
their team members. We do not want anyone additional people to approve
timesheets (so no next approvers are required nor wanted, team leader
approval should be final).

To achieve that we configured the system so that:

Team leaders belong to Project Managers Team Leads, Resource managers and
Team Members Security groups.
Their "Timesheet manager" and "Default Assignment Owner" attributes point to
themselves.

Team members belong to Team Members security groups only.
Their "Timesheet manager" attribute points to their appropriate team leader
(defined above) and "Default Assignment Owner" points to themselves.

Seems pretty stratghtforward, doesn't it?

** Problem statement: **
When in the end of the week team leader receives his team member weekly
timesheeet for approval, he/she wants jut to approve it by clicking the
"approve" button. It is important to mention, that the system automatically
fills in a "Set next approver" field with his/her own name (which as I
believe is the way the system says "no more approavls needed", as this field
does not accept empty values).

Unfortunately, pressing "Approve" generates an error of "Timesheet owner or
previous approvers cannot be approver" !!!

The only way around that problem we found is to type into "Set next
approver" field some different person with appropriate credentials (not
related to the given project). Then that second person is able to approve the
timesheet permanently. Unfortunately it is a tedious soution, as the team
leader need to walk around and beg his random collegues for approval, just
because we cannot force the tool to do what we want...

I just do not understand that effect. My team leaders have their "Timesheet
manager" fields pointing to themselves, so the system should auto-accept
whatever they approve...

Or am I missing something?

I guess I do something wrong, but I feel confused and I do not know where to
look for where the problem may be.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions,

Pawel

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Pawel:

I'm sure that nobody has answered simply because it would take some time to
duplicate your situation. I think you may very well have clobbered the
process with your multiple group membership which isn't a very good idea to
begin with. I wouldn't be surprised if you're causing an unexpected
recursion or circular relationship in the system by having a single person
identified as a RM and TL and PM for the same resource. I'm particularly
concerned about the combination of being RM, TL and default timesheet
approver. Maybe you could experiment with this a litte. You need to reduce
this scheme to its essential elements eliminating the unnecessary
complexity.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com

 

[Pawel]

Thank you Gary. I will try to experiment with decreasing complexity.
Actually as far as I remember, I added the RM role exactly because I had
that problem before and truied to find a solution. But I must admit, that
after experimenting with the for too long (and not making notes along the
way, as it seemed a simple issue at the begining), I cannot now be sure of
anything

I just wonder what _should_ be the simplest working configration of roles
and "Timesheet manager" and "Default Assignment Owner" (any others?) resource
attributes so that the team leader:
- can create and manage his/her projects with his team members
- receives timesheet updates from his/her team members and can effectively
approve them him/herself?
That would be all I need

Thanks!

Pawel

 

[Andi]

I disagree that is the only cause for this. I've got the same issue with only one timesheet approver out of 10 and it's a very simple setup. The Timesheet Approvers are in one group with permissions to approve timesheets for their identified resources. All permissions are the same for this group and only one is having the issue. No one else has the same resource(s) as any other timesheet approver.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Andi --

Is the lone timesheet approver in any other security Groups other than the
Resource Managers group, or a custom Group you might have created? If so,
remove him/her from all other Groups and test to see if this solves the
problem. Let us know the results and we will try to help.




in message news:[email protected]...

 

[Andi Watson]

I had created a custom group for specific timesheet managers and each person in the group was responsible for their team with no overlap. Only one person was getting the timesheet manager can't approve or be the next approver... After several reviews of the permissions, I remembered something from 2000 and 20003 about the least permission will override other permissions and began looking at the categories. Once I compared the categories of all the members in this group, I found that this user did not have all the categories that the others did. Not sure why as the security templates drive the groups, categories and users permissions. The timesheet manager no longer gets the error now when he approves timesheets.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Andi:

Your statement "Not sure why as the security templates drive the groups,
categories and users permissions" is incorrect. Applying a security template
to a group does not affect categories at all.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com


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