Default generic resource task assignment owner in templates

J

.jussi

Hello everyone,

I'm looking for experiences in using generic resources for tasks assignments
in templates. The way we use them is roughly as follows:
* Enterprise templates have generic resources assigned to tasks
* Project managers create new projects using the templates and form a rough
schedule
* Resource manager reviews the schedule, sees which real resources are best
available for implementation and replaces the generics with real resources

My problem is that the generic resource task assignments' ownership defaults
to me. It seems that a project created from an enterprise template inherits
this information from the template. The assignment should default to the
project manager - any ideas how to accomplish this? Once the generic resource
is replaced with a real resource, the assignment ownership passes over to the
real resource, but until then it is assigned to the default assignment owner
- which seems to be me due to the enterprise template.

Thank you in advance,
- Jussi
 
M

Marc Soester [MVP]

Hi Jussi,

unfortunalty what you describe is a bug in Project server. When creating a
template, the user who created the template remains the status manager of the
tasks. There are some workarounds. The way I handle this is I set up a
Administrator account that I use to create templates. This means that generic
resource assignments are displayed in the administrator account which avoids
messing up my task page.

Somethimes you want that generic resources are updated by other users. In
this case you will need to change the status manager for this task manually.

I hope this makes sense and helps
 
J

.jussi

Hi Marc,

That is exactly the work-around I ended up with - I saved all the templates
using an separate admin account. Unfortunately this does not work
retroactively but fortunately for the few projects that do not get resourced
quickly and thus would linger on my tasks list I am able to go set the task
owners to the respective project managers.

It is starting to feel like that either I am extraordinarily talented in
running across every single one of them or PS2007 has more serious bugs than
I would expect a product of this profile (and price) to have.

Thank you again, you've made my life a bit easier once again.

- Jussi
 
G

Gary L. Chefetz

Actually, this one was fixed in one of the CUs. Update your system to make
this go away. However, note that the summary tasks will continue to reflect
the creator of the template, but this is not a problem because you don't add
resources to summary tasks.

--
----------
Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
Project Server Training: http://www.projectservertraining.com
Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
Project Server Help Blog: http://www.projectserverhelp.com
 
J

.jussi

Excellent, thank you! I'll go look for the CU and see what happens. We are
patched up to October, but have been waiting for the SP2 to land as our
bigger problems have not been issued in the CU's.

- Jussi
 
J

Jan

I'm have this issue now, we've updated with CU thorugh December, but i'm
getting the generic resources assigned to me even though the status manager
was changed to be someone else for all tasks (expect summary tasks of course)
and this was done before the project was published the first time.

Any suggestions?
 
G

Gary L. Chefetz

Jan:

Are we talking about assignment owner or are we talking about status
manager? The problem with jumping into a thread with a me-too post is that
symptoms can be similar and the problem very different. Jussi's problem was
with templates, specifically. Is this your issue?

Generic resources do not have assignment owners, so whoever publishes the
tasks (Status Manager) will see these on their My Tasks page. Is this what
you're dealing with? I recently blogged on this subject and need to do a
follow-up blog post to explain how to transition away from this problem
midstream. Check it out at:
http://www.projectserverhelp.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=48



--
----------
Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
Project Server Training: http://www.projectservertraining.com
Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
Project Server Help Blog: http://www.projectserverhelp.com
 
J

Jan

Hi Gary,

I was referring to creating a project from a template that has generic
resources and when the project manager published the project all the generic
resources assignments showed up in my task view. We checked the status
manager in the project and it was the PM who published.

I checked the generic resources and I don't see an assignment owner nor do i
see where i can assign or unassign an assignment owner.

I'll check out your blog for more info.

Thanks

Jan
 
S

Shawn Everingham

Gary, I responded to your blog post, but not sure if it went any where.

I have a great need to have the functionality you address in this blog post.
Well written, and thanks for the guidance in regards to Generic Resouces.

So, I have a Generic Resource, named, Generic: DBA. As a generic resource,
the RES_DEF_ASSN_OWNER is NULL in the table MSP_RESOURCES in the published
database. I have set this field for the Generic: DBA to be the RES_UID for
the DBA Team Lead, for example. So RES_DEF_ASSN_OWNER = RES_UID of a REAL
LIVE resource.

I would think this would send the Default Assignment Owner 1) an email when
the project is published and a task has been assigned to the Generic: DBA
resource, 2) the task would show up on the DBA Team Lead's My Tasks page.

This is not happening. Even though the RES_DEF_ASSN_OWNER = RES_UID of a
live resource, when I add the column in MS Proejct Assignement Owner for the
task, it shows ME...the project owner. So the task shows up in MY Tasks list,
not the 'hacked' RES_DEF_ASSN_OWNER field.

Why is MS Project not grabbing the default assignment owner?
Is there another field that governs this behavior? thanks in advance!
Shawn
 
G

Gary L. Chefetz

Shawn:

If you're using the a modified stored procedure to accomplish your setting,
understand that by doing this in the database we are outside Project Server
database, and can't get around program logic that omits generic resources
from notification emails. The only problem that I am reasonably certain is
safe and effective to solve using this technique is to clear these
assignments form the Project Manger's My Task page without unpublishing
them. As generic resources, I would expect system behavior to be consistent
for the resource type regardless of the default assignment owner. I'm not
endorsing your change because I have not tested for potential consequences,
however you could certainly add your own custom notifications,

--
----------
Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
Project Server Training: http://www.projectservertraining.com
Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
Project Server Help Blog: http://www.projectserverhelp.com
 
S

Shawn Everingham

Gary,

Thank you for the quick reply. You may have misunderstood me. I'm not
looking for endorsement for your solution to Generic Resources. What I would
like to understand, is I follow your procedure to update the
RES_DEF_ASSN_OWNER with the RES_UID of the generic resource itself.

UPDATE MSP_RESOURCES
SET RES_DEF_ASSN_OWNER = RES_UID
WHERE (RES_TYPE = 20)

cept, my where clause is WHERE (RES_NAME like 'Generic: DBA%')

However, this does not remove it from my tasks (I'm the project owner).

It would also seem logical, that if I assigned the RES_DEF_ASSN_OWNER a
valid GUID for a valid, live resource, then when I assign a task to the
generic resource, then the Assignment Owner ought to equal the Default
Assignment Owner, in this case, a valid resource. However, this is not the
case. It defaults to the project owner for the Assignment Owner when I assign
a Generic resource to a task.

Taking this a step further, I tried to manually change the field Assignment
Owner in my MS Project project by adding the Assignment Owner field and
changing it value from my name (the project owner) to another valid resource.
Project, however, would not accept the resource for the assignment owner
field, because that resource was not in my 'Resource Team' for the project. I
added this live/valid/enterprise resource to my team, made him/her the
Assignment Owner, and sure enough, those tasks, although assigned to a
Generic resource, showed up on the Assignment Owner's My Task page...as hoped.

My question is, why is the default assignment owner not populating in my
projects Assignment Owner field, and instead, populating that field with the
project owner...seems to go against your solution...help?!

Thanks!
 
G

Gary L. Chefetz

Shawn:

Perhaps I didn't express myself well in the previous post, but my point is
that I can't tell you what the application logic is behind the behaviors you
are describing as I'm not privy to the code base. It's clear to me just by
the lack of constraints in the database is that all database integrity is
handled programmatically and I have no idea what the system can tolerate
beyond the hack I specified as I have not tried to push this out-of-band
solution any further, other than asking for a Design change around this for
the next version.

The reply I got for the design change seemed to suggest that the capacity
for generic resources to be their own assignment owners may have been the
original design intent and that this somehow got lost in the sauce. So the
only thing I can say with certainty is that the system seems to support the
hack for setting generic resources as their own assignment owners through
this stored procedure hack. From what you report, I can only surmise that in
extending the hack, you're running afoul of some logic in the code.

--
----------
Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
Project Server Training: http://www.projectservertraining.com
Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
Project Server Help Blog: http://www.projectserverhelp.com
 
C

Caroline

Shawn:

Perhaps I didn't express myself well in the previous post, but my point is
that I can't tell you what the application logic is behind the behaviors you
are describing as I'm not privy to the code base. It's clear to me just by
the lack of constraints in the database is that all database integrity is
handled programmatically and I have no idea what the system can tolerate
beyond the hack I specified as I have not tried to push this out-of-band
solution any further, other than asking for a Design change around this for
the next version.

The reply I got for the design change seemed to suggest that the capacity
for generic resources to be their own assignment owners may have been the
original design intent and that this somehow got lost in the sauce. So the
only thing I can say with certainty is that the system seems to support the
hack for setting generic resources as their own assignment owners through
this stored procedure hack. From what you report, I can only surmise thatin
extending the hack, you're running afoul of some logic in the code.

--
----------
Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
Project Server Consulting:http://www.msprojectexperts.com
Project Server Training:http://www.projectservertraining.com
Project Server FAQS:http://www.projectserverexperts.com
Project Server Help Blog:http://www.projectserverhelp.com

message










...

read more »- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

Have you considered using the "assignment owner" field? This is a bit
of a pain in that you have to set it individually for each task but it
means the tasks won't appear in your task list.
You should set your resource manager as the assignment owner then the
tasks will appear in their task list until they assign it to someone
specific.
I'm not using templates so I can't comment on whether you can do this
in your template or not, but you can do it in each project you create,

Caroline
 
G

Gary L. Chefetz

Caroline:

You cannot edit this field for Generic Resources.

--
----------
Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
Project Server Training: http://www.projectservertraining.com
Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
Project Server Help Blog: http://www.projectserverhelp.com


Shawn:

Perhaps I didn't express myself well in the previous post, but my point is
that I can't tell you what the application logic is behind the behaviors
you
are describing as I'm not privy to the code base. It's clear to me just by
the lack of constraints in the database is that all database integrity is
handled programmatically and I have no idea what the system can tolerate
beyond the hack I specified as I have not tried to push this out-of-band
solution any further, other than asking for a Design change around this
for
the next version.

The reply I got for the design change seemed to suggest that the capacity
for generic resources to be their own assignment owners may have been the
original design intent and that this somehow got lost in the sauce. So the
only thing I can say with certainty is that the system seems to support
the
hack for setting generic resources as their own assignment owners through
this stored procedure hack. From what you report, I can only surmise that
in
extending the hack, you're running afoul of some logic in the code.

--
----------
Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
Project Server Consulting:http://www.msprojectexperts.com
Project Server Training:http://www.projectservertraining.com
Project Server FAQS:http://www.projectserverexperts.com
Project Server Help Blog:http://www.projectserverhelp.com

message










...

read more »- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

Have you considered using the "assignment owner" field? This is a bit
of a pain in that you have to set it individually for each task but it
means the tasks won't appear in your task list.
You should set your resource manager as the assignment owner then the
tasks will appear in their task list until they assign it to someone
specific.
I'm not using templates so I can't comment on whether you can do this
in your template or not, but you can do it in each project you create,

Caroline
 
S

Shawn Everingham

Gary, thanks so much for the detail in your response. I agree that extending
the 'work around' causes a foul with the code...thanks for clearing that up.

Shawn
 

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