Impacts to Move to Timesheet Reporting

[Carla Evans]

Team members have been reporting work effort on project tasks only through
the My Tasks page in EPMS 2007 for about 1-1/2 years. Leadership has asked
that I evaluate impacts to moving to the Timesheet function so we can also
track Administrative Time. I need direction where to start my research.
Articles I could read? Share your experience? Many thanks in advance.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Carla --

You can certain get some "bang for your buck" by using the My Timesheet
feature in Project Server 2007. For example, one great benefit is the Plan
Administrative Time feature. When a resource submits planned Vacation to
his/her functional manager, and the manager approves the vacation time,
Project Server 2007 automatically adds the vacation time as nonworking time
on the user's personal calendar in the Enterprise Resource Pool. Another
benefit is that you have the option for functional managers to approve the
time and administrative time for the people who report to them, or to have
each user's time "auto approved" when they submit it. That is one important
decision you will need to make before you "go live" with the My Timesheet
capabilities (you need to decide who is the Timesheet Manager for each
user).

One big challenge you might face is "push back" from users who feel like you
are requiring them to enter time twice in two different locations in Project
Server 2007. To work around this issue, your Project Server adminstrator
can download and install the Tied Mode tool from CodePlex. This way, when a
user enters time in the My Timesheet page, the system automatically adds the
time to the My Tasks page. Keep in mind, however, that users will still
need to submit their time on the My Timesheet page and submit their task
updates on the My Tasks page. To download the Tied Mode tool, refer to the
following URL:

http://autostatusservice.codeplex.com/

If you can wait a little while, Steve Sanderlin from our company is
producing an enhanced Tied Mode tool called the Timesheet AutoStatus Plus
tool. He anticipates it will be available by mid-December.

Just a few ideas for you. I hope the others will share their "two cents"
worth with you as well! Hope this helps.

 

[Carla Evans]

As always, Dale you are the best! Thank you so much for the information. We
do not have a hard and fast deadline to move to Timesheets. We're in the
middle of a process improvement exercise, and EPMS is our primary tracking
tool of resources for that process, but our target isn't until the end of the
first quarter, 2010.