Barring PM's from approving time

[JungleBoy]

Hi,

We use manages time periods; I close the periods every week after which
resources cannot enter time. But managers can approve it. Sometimes some
managers approve time after 4-5 weeks which makes our weekly report
inconsistent. Is it possible to do something so that managers cannot approve
time after a deadline similar to the resources who cannot enter time after
the period is closed.

Thanks.

 

[James Fraser]

... Is it possible to do something so that managers cannot approve
time after a deadline similar to the resources who cannot enter time after
the period is closed.

I can imagine some ways to do this, but I'm not sure I like them.
Here's a big question that comes to mind:

1) what should then happen to this unapproved time? It gets dropped
out of the system, and now the task owner time is under-reported
because the RM or PM wasn't timely?

This strikes me as a compliance problem. Someone should be looking at
the list of active projects that haven't been published lately, and
reminding PM's to keep their plans up to date. (The project owners
should look for updates when republishing plans, of course.)


James Fraser

 

[JungleBoy]

James:

Thanks for your answer. This sure is an complaince issue. The number of
hours which go unapproved is not that high but we dont want them to get
approved later as this creates discrepancy between our report.

What are ways you can think of? As you said you know some ways to accomplish
this.

Thanks.

 

[James Fraser]

James:

Thanks for your answer. This sure is an complaince issue. The number of
hours which go unapproved is not that high but we dont want them to get
approved later as this creates discrepancy between our report.

What are ways you can think of? As you said you know some ways to accomplish
this.

As I mentioned, I don't like these methods, and I'm pretty sure they
aren't supported by Microsoft. All of these involve direct
manipulation of the SQL tables.
1. Set the Assignment to no longer have pending updates. This would
leave the outstanding updates in the system, and when an update is
next submitted, the older work would also again be pending acceptance.
2. Set the pending update work to be rejected, and set the assignment
to have no pending updates.
3. Set the pending work as accepted. This takes advantage of a
weakness of Project Pro 2003 that it will not actually look at the web
work tables to recreate Protected work. It only enters work into
Protected when it accepts an update. (Please verify this before
relying on this information, but this has been my experience.)


Again, I don't recommend or approve of these approaches, I just think
they are possible...
James Fraser