Administrative Time vs. Administrative Projects

[Ueli]

The more we dive into the administrative time functionality of Prj Server
2007 the less I can see the advantage over running administrative
pseudo-projects.

What are the advantages and disadvantages in your opinion?

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Ueli:

I really think it's a toss-up. Go with what makes you comfortable. If you've
got oodles of line items, the project plan approach probably wins out. If
you can keep it simple, the administrative time functionality isn't so bad.

--

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

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Ueli --

Pseudo-Administrative projects are useful for capturing non-project time for
special roles or teams, for tasks that you don't want to show on everyone's
My Timesheet page in PWA. The Administrative tasks that appear on the My
Timesheet for everyone should only be Administrative tasks that apply to
everyone in the organization, such as Vacation, Sick Leave, Meetings, etc.
So, if you wanted to track non-project related work done by DBAs, for
example, you could create a pseudo-Administrative project with tasks
specific to DBAs only. This way, only the DBAs would see and report on
those tasks in their My Timesheet page. Hope this helps.

 

[Dennin Smith]

The key thing for me is how you want to report this information from your
OLAP cubes using Data Analysis. If you only used the administrative time
feature of timesheets and did not track project task progress in your
timesheet or even display your tasks in the timesheet you would have a
problem if you wanted to combine task information and administrative time
into one report using data analysis. Project information from MSP including
task infomation is pulled into a different database to the information from
your timesheet. If your project tasks did not appear on your timesheet
because you were only using administrative time you could not pull a report
from Data Analysis to display how much time was spent on project tasks and
how much time was spent on non project (administrative) tasks.
If you use a pseudo admin project in MSP you will have all the infomation in
one database when reporting, OR if you tracked project tasks in your
timesheet as well as administrative time you would again have all the info in
one place when reporting.
Just remember that depending on how you track project tasks in your
timesheet you might need to import them back into the My Tasks page to submit
them to the project manager.

 

[Riso]

Wow. Reading these lines puts the new "administrative time" reporting
feature of PS2007 in a totally different light and potentially makes
it completely useless..

Here is my scenario: I am having our resources to enter all project
time against project tasks on "My Tasks" page; and all admin time
against administrative tasks on "My Timesheet" page. We are
encouraging them to create their timesheets by using the "Create with
tasks" method. The reason for this is that if they populated this
timesheets with project tasks, they tend to enter project time on My
Timesheet page and as well all know those hours never made it to
project plans and project time reports. Explaining them the Import
functionality was just too complicated for them and they were loosing
faith in the whole system. So we established clean and crisp process -
project time on My tasks, admin time on My timesheet, no export/import
cross functionality.

From what I just learned it is obvious that I won't be able to create
a simple report executives are asking me to deliver - what is the
ratio between project and admin time spent by our resources across our
enterprise. They want to have the data broken down by teams and
particular resources. Am I right?

Thanks for your support,
Risiak...

 

[Dennin Smith]

Yes you are correct, that if the My Timesheet only contains admin time and
the My tasks page only contains project tasks then you wont be able to pull a
report showing both bit of information using the olap cubes and data
analysis. you would need project tasks to be displayed on the timesheet to
get a report like that. In our organisation hours per day is important as we
have a lot of billable resources who need to book time. We have locked down
the option to prevent resources from updating tasks on the My Tasks page -
they have to do it in the My timesheet. We have a reporting cycle that the
timesheet is updated once a week on a friday. On a friday we build the
timesheet to include project tasks and update all work project and other on
the timesheet. We then submit that and then go to the My tasks page and
import that weeks timesheet and import it so that the project in MSP can be
updated - it can be a bit complicated for people and cause resistance so you
mentioned. the probelms that can be experienced is if you build the timesheet
on a wednesday and a project manager then assigns you to a task on the
thursday - that task wont appear on your timesheet and might get overlooked.
Also if a person uses the Plan Administrative time and books leave etc in the
future then that timesheet is created and the project tasks wont necesarily
appear on that timesheet if they are creayed and assigned after the timesheet
was created.

 

[Riso]

Yes you are correct, that if the My Timesheet only contains admin time and
the My tasks page only contains project tasks then you wont be able to pull a
report showing both bit of information using the olap cubes and data
analysis. you would need project tasks to be displayed on the timesheet to
get a report like that. In our organisation hours per day is important aswe
have a lot of billable resources who need to book time. We have locked down
the option to prevent resources from updating tasks on the My Tasks page -
they have to do it in the My timesheet. We have a reporting cycle that the
timesheet is updated once a week on a friday. On a friday we build the
timesheet to include project tasks and update all work project and other on
the timesheet. We then submit that and then go to the My tasks page and
import that weeks timesheet and import it so that the project in MSP can be
updated - it can be a bit complicated for people and cause resistance so you
mentioned. the probelms that can be experienced is if you build the timesheet
on a wednesday and a project manager then assigns you to a task on the
thursday - that task wont appear on your timesheet and might get overlooked.
Also if a person uses the Plan Administrative time and books leave etc inthe
future then that timesheet is created and the project tasks wont necesarily
appear on that timesheet if they are creayed and assigned after the timesheet
was created.

Thanks for your reply Dennis - you are right, it is a bit complicated
and I am trying to do the whole time reporting process as easy as
possible for our people. They've been trained to enter their project
time on My Tasks page and I am pretty certain re-training is not an
option. How is the import process work for you - don't you experience
any issues with it?

Riso