Admin project weird behavior

[Mike]

Hello all, I really hope I can get some help on this one. I have been
granted the glorious task of implementing MS Project 2003 to our IT
dept of about 85 people. Everything is going fine, we've ran some test
projects with a small group and normal use has been what we expected.

Here's the problem: We are using an administrative project for the
typical stuff (sick, vactaion, personal days, etc). All 85 resources
are assigned to the 6 tasks in the admin project (1 task each for sick
time, vacation time, and 4 others). The problem is happening when we
approving time entered into this admin project. After approving the
time in PWA, of course it opens the project in Project Pro and saves
the project. When doing so, it then blasts email to all 85 resources
alerting them that there was a change in the project. All we did was
approve time. This happens even when it's as little as approving time
for 1 resource into 1 task of the admin project. It's acting as if
it's automatically doing a publish all on save. We've verified that
the checkbox (New and Changed assignments) under Collaborate >
Collaborate Options > Collaborate Tab is NOT checked.

I'm told this should not happen, but regardless, it is. We do not have
this problem with normal projects, only administrative projects. Any
insight in how to resolve this?

Regards,
Mike

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Mike -

This is one more of the bizarre behaviors in Administrative projects that
makes them so annoying to use. The best I can tell you is that your team
members should deselect one option in PWA that will make all those annoying
e-mails go away. Each team member should do the following:

1. Log into PWA
2. In the sidepane of the Home page, click the "Alert me about my tasks and
status reports" link
3. Deselect the "My project tasks are modified" option
4. Click the Save Changes button

The only negative consequence is that e-mail messages about project changes
will no longer be sent to team members. They will still receive messages
when they get one or more tasks in a new project, however. Just a thought.
Hope this helps.

 

[Mike]

Thanks for your reply, Dave. Much appreciated. So, you're telling me
this is a normal and expected behavior of all admin projects? Or, is
it possible that we have a bit flag stuck somewhere that is allowing
this to happen? If this is normal, I can't see how anyone is using
admin projects. The email is just too much, plus it's confusing.
Especially when the task didn't change. Even when I first created the
project and saved it, all the emails were sent (alerting of being added
to the project). I didn't even have to choose to publish it. This is
really odd I think.

Regards,
Mike

 

[Mike]

Sorry.. that's "Thanks for your reply, Dale".

Ugh

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Mike --

Apology accepted. Yes, what you are seeing is the normal behavior of
Project Server. Because of the many issues with the use of administrative
projects, Gary Chefetz and I recommend the use of regular projects that
function like administrative projects. Hope this helps.

 

[Robert]

Dale,

I hope you get this. I am not sure if your notification tracks changes to
old postings, but here goes. You mentioned that you and Gary recommend using
regular projects instead of Admin projects. How do you feed the time sheets
into PWA time tracking elements. (Approval of timesheets, review, etc...)?

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Robert --

Simply set up your regular project to function like a regular project, and
then publish the project as you would regularly do. The only thing you will
need to do is to tell your team members to regularly add a few hours of
Remaining Work on these tasks, otherwise, the Current Tasks setting will
cause them to disappear when the Remaining Work falls to 0 hours. Hope this
helps.