Administrative Projects in Project Server 2007

[Peter M.]

Hello there,
As far as I know, in Project and Server 2003, users are able to create
administrative projects. In 2007, this is no longer possible; at least, there
is no such explicit option any more. Now, my boss wants me to set up
administrative projects in Project Professional 2007 to track resource's base
load and vacation.
What is the best way to accomplish this? And how would it be connected with
Timesheets/Taskpage in Project Server?
Actually, we wanted to use the administrative time feature, but obvioulsy,
the management has changed its opinion.

Can you help me out and tell what would be most simple and appropriate here?


Thanks.

 

[Guest]

Hello Peter,

Connect to PWA as an administrator.
Select the Server Settings on the quick launch tool bar.
Select Administrative Time under the Time and Task Management heading.
Enter the time categories you need.
Check the appropriate Display Always boxes.
Click the Save button.
If you haven't already done so, create your timesheet periods (Server Settings).
Select My Timesheets on the quick launch menu.
Create your time sheet and your admin options should be found near the bottom
of the list.

Bob Segrest, PMP
MCITP, Microsoft Office Blackbelt

 

[Peter M.]

Thanks for you instruction. This is indeed what we wanted to go for
initially, now as mentioned in my opening post, my boss wants to have
administrative projects set up in Project Professional. Is that completely
the wrong way? Would you recommend to use the administrative time feature?
Because if so, I would propose this to my boss again.
The thing, it would be easier to just export an administrative project from
Project Professional and print it out, and additionally, line manager would
be able to enter their resources vacation time in the project, while with the
administrative time feature, each and every resource has to do this on their
own.

I just wonder, whether setting up a project for tracking absences would be
this much worse in you expert's minds than using administrative time. I ask,
because my boss prefers this method.

Thanks again.

 

[Ueli]

Hi Peter,

We decided to move to administrative pseudo-projects as well and do not use
the admin time feature of PrjS anymore.

We have an Administrative Project with tasks like sick leave, training etc..
All resources are assigned to all the tasks, so they can report against it.
We then have a subproject called 'vacation' with priority 1000 and a
summarytask for every resource. Whenever the person gets vacation approved we
add a subtask (eg 'honey moon') for that period.

This is quite easy to setup and to maintain, and with little tuning of the
Gantt Chart you get a good overview of the vacation planning in your company:
Right-click in your Gantt Chart; choose Layout; mark 'Always roll up Gantt
bars'; deselect 'Hide rollup bars...'; ok; right-click Gantt Chart; choose
Bar Styles; select the Summary Task and set the Start, Middle and End Shapes
to blank; show only the Outline Level 1.

Hope that helps,

 

[Guest]

Hi Peter,

There is really no such thing as an "Administrative Project" in Project Server
2007.

There is certainly nothing to keep you from creating a project and using it for
administrative accounting. However, all of the reasons for not doing this in
the past still apply. Consider the realities involved with this approach for a
few minutes...

Do you really want to assign ALL of your resources to a project?
Who is going to update and manage the project?
You can't assign a resource to a task without specifying a work duration. If
you assign every employee to every task in your admin project, there is going
to be some finite impact on the availability for each resource. Is this
something you can or want to live with?

In general, this is considered a poor administrative practice.

Most organizations that I have consulted for consider the idea of each employee
entering their own vacation time a good thing. Keep in mind that you can
require management approval on a line by line basis.

Finally, allow me to observe that support (and Microsoft empathy) tends to dry
up quickly when you elect do things outside of Microsoft's best practice
recommendations.

Bob Segrest, PMP
MCITP, Microsoft Project Blackbelt

 

[Ueli]

Bob,

Finally, allow me to observe that support (and Microsoft empathy) tends to dry
up quickly when you elect do things outside of Microsoft's best practice
recommendations.

Well, also the Redmond gods do fail, sometimes...
The point is, and a lot of PrjS 2003-2007 experienced people and consultants
do agree, that MS worsened the product with the new timesheet/task update
concept. IMHO there is no 'best practice' to work around the mess. Every
company has to evaluate the pros and cons and come to a proper solution. It
depends very much on the HR, reporting and staffing processes.

In case of doubt I would recommend to run a test drive with the simpler
solution. If it works, fine. If not, change.

 

[Peter M.]

Thanks heaps Bob and Ueli for your support, very kind.

@Ueli, let me ask one question. You say you create tasks in your admin
project like sick leave, training etc. and assign all resources to every task
so they can report against em.
Don't quite get this, what kind of task type and options do you use? And
don't resources get evenly spread hours over the duration (assume 1 year or
so) of the task in project pro? Sounds a little confusing to me. I'd
appreciate if you could clarify the matter.


Thanks.

 

[Ueli]

Don't quite get this, what kind of task type and options do you use? And

don't resources get evenly spread hours over the duration (assume 1 year or
so) of the task in project pro? Sounds a little confusing to me. I'd

Peter,

Try to make the task type fixed work and set the duration to zero. When
adding resources they all should have Work = 0hrs. But anyway, the Work-field
ist not of any interest for us, just the actual work. You can then pimp a
Task Usage view adding just the 'actual work' column and row. Then you have a
nice table to track this kind of not-planned leave.

Does this answer your question?