How do deal with test equipment as a resource?

[Bob Schroen]

We need to be able to manage resources that are fixed assets such as test
equipment and other tools.

I plan to set them up as resources but I do not want any time sheets to be
completed and/or reminders to be sent out therefore I am wondering if I
should set them up as proposed resources.

Will I still be able to determin over allocation and/or if a piece of
equipment is available for a specific task?

I would like to find out how others have dealt with this issue, any advise
is welcome.

Thanks in advance - Bob

 

[RickD]

If the material (ie. test equipment) has a standard cost, put them in the
enterprise and set the Type to "material". Put in the hourly rate you will
charge. There is no timesheet requirement for material resources. If the rate
is different depending on the Porject, use a local resource. Make sure you
set the Workgroup to None though or you will get spooler errors when you
publish.

 

[Bob Schroen]

Unfortunatly when a resource is set to "material" you can not view the
availability via the PWA resource option.

Is there a way arround this?

 

[RickD]

OK; make the resource generic. It will show in availability then but it means
you have to figure out units to reflect the correct cost if it is varaible
across different projects.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Bob:

I think you're better off using work resources for your non-human work
resources. You can set these to Project Server Authentication if your
environment is set to use mixed auth. I'm pretty sure you'll want these in
your resource pool. Simply ignore the accounts that get created in Project
Server and deduct these when figuring your license count. Know that you are
not obligated to buy a license for a resource that doesn't use PWA. The fact
that Project Server doesn't recognize non-human work resources as a special
class of resource is one of the Project's short comings.

 

[Mike]

Making this kit a work resource means you can view assignments easily,
you can set an availability level, and view in Resource Availability
view. Email is not a problem as you will not assign a email address.
Alternatively you can make a feature of this and route the assignment
request to the owner of the kit. The task page for this account could
also be used identify demand and could even be updated. Clearly an
outline code should distinguiish this resource from a people resource
so portfolio analyser views can be set up correctly. Note its also
very easy to clear out assignments for a resource.

regards

Mike