Enterprise Calendar and out-of-office days

[Brian Lukanic]

I searched for existing threads on this but couldn't find. Suprising, as I
assume it's a common question:


We're soon to roll out MOPS2007 to a pilot group. The masses are starting to
ask me about whether out-of-office days in Exchange will cascade to Project
Server. I know they won't, but I am not sure of the best answer to give. What
our users want to see (and I tend to agree with them) is not every single
calendar entry entered by a user in their Outlook calendar fed back to EPM;
but if a person is taking a 2-week vacation, the PM ought to be able to know
that information before they assign out their tasks. Since Exchange and MOPS
don't communicate, is the next best thing to tell my users that they need to
keep their ooo days current in Exchange AND the enterprise resource pool? In
other words, dual entry manually by each user? I'll certainly create a master
calendar for organizational days off (such as holidays,) but I'd like and
need a resource pool that does show people 100% booked (or unavailable) for
days in which they are going to be on vacation. And I want them to be able to
self-enter this information in EPM.

What's the best way to do that? My current idea is to have each user create
their on "administrative time" lists where they block out 8-hour days for all
days they are on vacation. At least that will block them from assignability.
If there's a better way to handle this as a best practice I'd sure appreciate
it.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Brian --

As you have surmised correctly, Project Server 2007 does not synchronize
time off, such as vacation, with each user's Calendar in Outlook.
Therefore, you really have only two options for entering nonworking time on
each resource's calendar in the Enterprise Resource Pool:

1. Teach your users how to enter planned vacation by clicking the Plan
Administrative Time button on the My Timesheets page.

2. Have the Project Server administrator, or a person that he/she
designates, manually enter each planned vacation time instance on the
resource's calendar in the Enterprise Resource Pool.

Hope this helps.

 

[Brian Lukanic]

Thanks Dale. Thanks for validating, I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing
something. I'm going to go with the option of training my people to enter
administrative time in the dashboard. I can live with asking people to be
accountable for keeping their vacation days current in two places.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Brian --

The nice thing about using the Plan Administrative Time feature is that you
can set up Project Server 2007 so that each user's functional manager is the
approver of the vacation time. To do this, you would need to do the
following:

1. Add each functional manager to the Resource Managers group in PWA. This
gives them the permissions to serve as a Timesheet Manager for one or more
resources.

2. Open each resource for editing in the Resource Center page and specify
the user's functional manager as the Timesheet Manager.

Once vacation is approved by a resource's functional manager, the vacation
time is automatically entered as nonworking time on the resource's calendar
in the Enterprise Resource Pool. Hope this helps.

 

[Brian Lukanic]

Dale - we are insituting this and it seems to be working great as a business
process. But now I have a followup question: Our managers want to be able to
see a "team calendar" for all of the reports that roll up to them. They want
a single-page display that shows all vacation days for their resources.

Is there a canned view or report in Server that will deliver this
information? Or do I need to create a report to do it? If you could recommend
best practice I would appreciate it. Hoping there's simply a view/filter I
can create in Resource Center.
Thanks
bRian

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Brian --

Bad news, my friend. There is no default View that displays this kind of
information. You would probably need to create a custom Report using SQL
Reporting Services or Crystal Reports to get this information. Hope this
helps.

 

[Brian Lukanic]

Dale,

Ok, not necessarily too bad of a problem as I anticipated the need to do
some custom reports. My team is installing Reporting Services for me anyway.
But a question: I can get away with doing this via Reporting Services only
and won't need Analysis Services too, correct? I don't need cubes or pretty
charts/graphs. As long as I can get the data out my team will be ok.

Thanks!

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Brian --

You may want to take a look at using a Data Analysis view for this purpose.
That way you can decide which vehicle presents the necessary information in
the best manner. Hope this helps.