Disappearing Outline Codes

[Charlie Holmes]

Hi all -

We're running Project Server 2003 SP1 with Project Professional 2003
RTM clients connecting to it. We have a two-server setup (PWA, Views
Notification, and WSS on one server, and the database and cubes on the
other server.) We're having a strange issue here (something I've not
seen before):

There are certain enterprise project outline code values that don't
show up in the drop-down lists within Project Professional (either from
the "Project Information" box or from within the "Enterprise Global"
customization box.) They were there one day, and now they're not.

When we try to re-enter the missing outline codes, we can enter them,
click "OK" and close the Enterprise Global dialog, but if we re-open
it, they appear in duplicate. (i.e. Open the dialog to edit Outline
Code lookup tables, add "Outline Code 1" to the lookup. Close the
lookup table box, close the Enterprise Field dialog. Upon reopening
the Enterprise Field dialog and looking at the Lookup Table, it now
shows "Outline Code 1" and "Outline Code 1" on the line beneath it.)

The really troubling part of this is that the outline codes still show
up in the MSP_CUBE_ENTERPRISE_PROJECT_OUTLINE_x tables.

We have not made any changes to the Project Server database tables so
far. (All we've done is create some reports that draw out of them.)

I'd appreciate any insight on this!

Charlie Holmes
RGA

 

[omar]

Charlie,
I don't know if thats going to help but there is Project
Professional SP2 out. Try installing that and see if you still see the
problem.
omar

 

[Charlie Holmes]

We are running version SP2 of the client.

A little extra information though (something I just found):

In the MSP_CUBE_ENTERPRISE_PROJECT_OUTLINE_x table, the outline codes
which are disappearing have a lower PROJ_OUTLINECODE_ID than their
parents do (i.e. there are children that have ID's of 403, 404, and
405, and their parent has an ID of 406).

Is it possible that in the programming of the routine that loads up the
nice parent-child tree view (both in the "Customize Enterprise Fields"
dialog and in the "Project Information" dialog) that no one planned for
this (strange) event? It's possible that whatever routine does the
loading from the database discovers the child objects without knowing
about their parent objects and just silently discards them?

Any ideas?

Thanks!
Charlie Holmes
RGA

 

[Charlie Holmes]

Good news! (And my last note can be disregarded)

http://www.projectserverexperts.com/Shared Documents/SP2Scramblesocs.htm

We had no projects with a PROJ_TYPE=2 and a PROJ_EXT_EDITED=1, but I
did notice the section at the bottom of that page describing how to fix
residual anomalies...

I checked out the enterprise global, edited the lookup table of the
code that was misbehaving, collapsed everything, expanded it back out,
and my "disappearing" outline code members came back!

Thanks!

Charlie Holmes
RGA

P.S. I should have known that Gary and Dale have all the answers... :-D

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Charlie --

Thank you for the kind comments!