How to see Actual work data before it is published?

[Gil]

Hi all,
We are using Project Server 2007. Resources submit actual work daily,
no timesheet.

I want to be able to check once a week how much actual work resources
have submitted last week.
As I understand, the data in PWA (Resource assignments view or Data
analysis) will be updated only after all project managers accept all
updates, and publish all projects.
The problem is that until I get that done, the report is irrelevant…
As an administrator, I can publish the projects myself, but this does
not solve the "accept updates by project managers first" problem.
What are my options? Can I get the data from somewhere else, right
after resources have saved it to the server, even if it is not
accepted and published yet?


Thanks, Gil

 

[.jussi]

Hi Gil,

I am struggling with the same issue. I have a report showing weekly actual
work. The report only becomes relevant as project managers accept hours and
publish the plans again. This means that the real data lags behind by days.

I did some extensive digging and found out where the submitted data is
stored in the database, but unfortunately it is stored as a next-to-unusable
binary blob.

So the next step is to make accepting submitted work and publishing projects
as lean as possible and enforcing a stricter control for project managers to
do it. I have auto-publishing (a custom event-handler) after accepting work
implemented on our test environment and it looks very promising.

I know this isn't much help, but at least you are not alone.

- Jussi

 

[Gil]

Hi Gil,

I am struggling with the same issue. I have a report showing weekly actual
work. The report only becomes relevant as project managers accept hours and
publish the plans again. This means that the real data lags behind by days.

I did some extensive digging and found out where the submitted data is
stored in the database, but unfortunately it is stored as a next-to-unusable
binary blob.

So the next step is to make accepting submitted work and publishing projects
as lean as possible and enforcing a stricter control for project managersto
do it. I have auto-publishing (a custom event-handler) after accepting work
implemented on our test environment and it looks very promising.

I know this isn't much help, but at least you are not alone.

- Jussi

Hi Jussi,
Thanks for sharing.. As I said, Publishing is less of a problem,
because I can do it for all projects (one at a time) as an
administrator, but accepting the updates is the tricky one..
I was hoping that I could get the submitted data with some kind of
query on the report services, but you say the data is unusable.. too
bad.
Thanks, Gil.

 

[.jussi]

Yes, the submitted updates are stored as a binary data blob. Looks like
someone took quite a shortcut in the database design there.

That, and it is stored in a part of the database that MS sais they do not
support custom development in. Which means that the data structure and
content might change without a warning in a CU.

- Jussi