"default" Status Manager?

[anovak]

Is there any way to set a default Status Manager for all projects?
Or does the PM have to change that for each project they create? This
would be in order to say give an Administrative Assistant the ability
to accept all task updates on a weekly basis and apply one time so
that the PMs don't have to go through that motion.

Also, is it better to accept progress via the web or Project Pro?
From what I've seen, the web may be more straightforward. Thru
Project Pro, I believe you would have to ahead of time which projects
need to accept progress data whereas the web view presents all tasks
for all projects that the Status Manager is responsible for, correct?

Thanks
Andy Novak
UNT

 

[Marc Soester [MVP]]

Hi Andy,


out of the box there is no way to have a "global" status manager for all
projects. This would need to be managed via a process. You suppose you could
custom develop a solution to achieve your requirements.

In order to answer where to accept task progress, well there is no clear yes
or no answer. I guess it very much depends on preverences and requirements.
Generally I tend to agree with you, I quite like the task acceptance in PWA
which allows you to view the project change before you accept it ( cool
feature ).

Yes you are correct that in PWA the status manager sees all projects that he
needs to update, He can even see a reminder on the PWA home page.

Hope this helps

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Andy --

The Administrative Assistant must still open each project into which he/she
will receive task updates and manually change the Status Manager for every
task. He/she can speed up this process by selectin his/her name on the
first task, and then using the Fill Handle to "fill down" his/her name into
every other task as well.

Regarding where to do task updates, Marc is right that there is no right or
wrong answer. My personal preference is to do this from with Project
Professional 2007. When you do this, the system navigates to the Task
Updates page in PWA, but shows it INSIDE OF Project Professional 2007, and
shows only the task updates for that specific project. On the Task Updates
page, you can still approve or reject all updates, and can even see the
updates preview as well. After approving and processing the task updates,
you can immediately see the impact of the updates on the project, and can
immediately begin variance analysis and plan revision. From there, you can
save and publish the latest schedule changes. If you do all updates in PWA
instead, you must still open each project to do variance analysis, plan
revision, and publishing, so there is little benefit to doing it from PWA
(in my opinion). Hope this helps.

 

[anovak]

Andy --

The Administrative Assistant must still open each project into which he/she
will receive task updates and manually change the Status Manager for every
task. He/she can speed up this process by selectin his/her name on the
first task, and then using the Fill Handle to "fill down" his/her name into
every other task as well.

Regarding where to do task updates, Marc is right that there is no right or
wrong answer. My personal preference is to do this from with Project
Professional 2007. When you do this, the system navigates to the Task
Updates page in PWA, but shows it INSIDE OF Project Professional 2007, and
shows only the task updates for that specific project. On the Task Updates
page, you can still approve or reject all updates, and can even see the
updates preview as well. After approving and processing the task updates,
you can immediately see the impact of the updates on the project, and can
immediately begin variance analysis and plan revision. From there, you can
save and publish the latest schedule changes. If you do all updates in PWA
instead, you must still open each project to do variance analysis, plan
revision, and publishing, so there is little benefit to doing it from PWA
(in my opinion). Hope this helps.

Not too long ago I found some server side code someone had built that
automatically publishes all projects as a batch job (which we would
run at night I suppose).
There were some parameters by which you could have the job pass or
skip certain attributed projects.

I would suppose that if we were to be able to use this successfully,
the PWA method of accepting all task updates at once might be faster
if you can depend upon the job to republish each evening.