Admin Projects and Cost Centers

[JamesG]

Two questions

1. i have set up an admin project using the help to allow our team to
allocate holiday etc, however following the example in the help i now have
sent the team a vacation. I thought i was just setting them up so they could
enter their holiday into project server so that they were not allocated to
tasks during their holiday. could someone please explain how this works

2. I have been asked by my boss to set this up so that we can allocate cost
centers to various projects for billing purposes. Is there a well documented
way of doing this? i was thinking about usng custom fields, but would like to
know if there's a better option

thanks in advance

James

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

JamesG --

1. If you want Project Server to automatically reschedule work assignments
around vacations, you are making a mistake in using an administrative
project for this purpose. Administrative projects are useful for reporting
on non-working time, such as vacations and sick leave, but do not cause the
automatic rescheduling of work in other projects. If you want the automatic
rescheduling, you must enter each instance of nonworking time on the
respective resource's personal calendar in the Enterprise Resource Pool.
Unfortunately, there is no automated way for team members to do this
themselves, therefore, the Project Server administrator will have to do this
manually.

2. I would recommend that you use a custom enterprise Project field or
outline code for this purpose. If you want the cost center information to
show up in the Portfolio Analyzer, you must use a custom enterprise Project
outline code. Otherwise, you could use a custom enterprise Project number
field or text field, perhaps with a value list as well.

Hope this helps.

 

[JamesG]

ok how does the administrator do this? I can see the calenders for resources
in Project but not in Project Server. We have a team where we have several
team members working on different projects at the same time, but their
holiday will be consistent accross all projects

Also could you point me in the right direction with respect to enterprise
Project
outline code or custom enterprise Project number. How do you set these up?
is there a piece in the user guide?

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

JamesG --

To add nonworking time to a resource's calendar in the Enterprise Resource
Pool, the Project Server administrator should do the following:

1. Launch Microsoft Project Professional and log into Project Server with
administrator permissions
2. Click Tools - Enterprise Options - Open Enterprise Resource Pool
3. Select the resources with nonworking time and then click the Open/Add
button
4. Double-click a resource's name
5. Select the Working Time tab
6. Select the vacation or sick leave days, and then select the Nonworking
time option
7. Click the Notes tab and add a note to document the nonworking time
instance
8. Click OK
9. Repeat steps #4-8 for each resource with nonworking time
10. Save and close the Enterprise Resource Pool

Regarding setting up a custom field or outline code, refer to the following
link for documentation and training resources:

http://www.projectserverexperts.com/Shared Documents/PS2003Documentation.htm

 

[JamesG]

ok got that and seems to work. However when i open the resources and look in
the resouce availablilty area on the general tab, i would expect it to say
that the person was not available during the peroid of their holiday and it
just comes up with NA

Any ideas, or have i got this all wrong?

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

JamesG --

The Availability information on the General tab of the Reource Information
dialog does not display the information you seek. You must look at the
Working Time tab to see each instance of items like vacation and sick leave.
The Availability section is used to show things like:

A college intern works half-time (50% Units) until January 1, 2006 when he
will go full-time
A full-time employee will go to half-time from January 1 - June 1, 2006 to
work on a Master's degree, at which time she will return to full-time work

The information entered in the Availability section impacts the Max. Units
value in the Resource Sheet view. Hope this helps.

 

[JamesG]

ok thanks.

couple more questions

1. Can project items ever appear as tasks rather than calandar items when
downloaded to Outlook
2. Is there an API into the project server database, so that we can link our
holiday booking system into this so that porject server automatically knows
non-working time
3. when using the project web access, the user guide shows two views of a
project item that i can get. The first is Actual Work DOne and Work
remaining. the guide shows both actual amd remaining items open for editing.
There is also another view, which looks like a time sheet view in project web
access (again in the manual), which would also be useful

Thanks

James

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

JamesG --

1. No. By default, the PWA addin for Outlook transfers the project tasks
to the Outlook calendar as appointments. If you wish to transfer them to
the the Tasks section of Outlook, you might consider using a third party
addin such as Allocatus:

http://www.allocatus.com/Home/en/Default.aspx

2. You would need to post this question in the
microsoft.public.project.developer newsgroup. Our company has developed an
application to do this, however, and we are currently beta testing it at one
of our client sites.

3. I don't understand your question. Please clarify.