S
Stephan Steiner
Hi
We'd like to have a more automated time reporting in our company. We've been
looking at Project Server, which offers many features we could use. However,
we need more details in time reporting. Specifically, when a regular team
member is in the task/assignment list, he can enter the hours he actually
worked on the assignment. For billing purposes, we need more than just a
number of hours.
The idea is to have a special form (Infopath most likely), where the
employee can enter date, start & end time, a work code (selectable from a
list), and a description field that'll end up on a report sent to the
customer. After reading through the Project SDK, I think it would be best if
we used an external table that contains the info we'd like to add to an
assignment. The reporting form would store data to this table, and use PDS
to update the assignment globally (report the number of hours per day).
So I started a few PDS trials, but it seems to me that the AssignmentsSave
method is not specific enough. I can modify timed entries and change the
assignment's global values (remaining hours, hours reported, percentage
complete), but I see no way to report an actual Timephased entry (as in
hours worked on day X, or hours of overtime on day X). So far my tries to
update the Timephased data have failed utterly (something about permissions
that I haven't quite been able to figure out), but I'm wondering if I'm not
wasting my time.. reading the PDS documentation over and over makes me think
I am.
So the alternative would be to write a PDS extender that updates the
database directly and have my Infopath form use the extended methods. I
realize that accessing the database directly is dangerous, hence I'm
wondering if there's a way I can lock an assignment, then update, then
unlock it again so I won't be having any concurrency issues. Also, if
somebody already knows where I have to look to find the entries that are
displayed in the work time table, I wouldn't mind knowing.
Regards
Stephan
We'd like to have a more automated time reporting in our company. We've been
looking at Project Server, which offers many features we could use. However,
we need more details in time reporting. Specifically, when a regular team
member is in the task/assignment list, he can enter the hours he actually
worked on the assignment. For billing purposes, we need more than just a
number of hours.
The idea is to have a special form (Infopath most likely), where the
employee can enter date, start & end time, a work code (selectable from a
list), and a description field that'll end up on a report sent to the
customer. After reading through the Project SDK, I think it would be best if
we used an external table that contains the info we'd like to add to an
assignment. The reporting form would store data to this table, and use PDS
to update the assignment globally (report the number of hours per day).
So I started a few PDS trials, but it seems to me that the AssignmentsSave
method is not specific enough. I can modify timed entries and change the
assignment's global values (remaining hours, hours reported, percentage
complete), but I see no way to report an actual Timephased entry (as in
hours worked on day X, or hours of overtime on day X). So far my tries to
update the Timephased data have failed utterly (something about permissions
that I haven't quite been able to figure out), but I'm wondering if I'm not
wasting my time.. reading the PDS documentation over and over makes me think
I am.
So the alternative would be to write a PDS extender that updates the
database directly and have my Infopath form use the extended methods. I
realize that accessing the database directly is dangerous, hence I'm
wondering if there's a way I can lock an assignment, then update, then
unlock it again so I won't be having any concurrency issues. Also, if
somebody already knows where I have to look to find the entries that are
displayed in the work time table, I wouldn't mind knowing.
Regards
Stephan