Inactive Resources

[ProjectAnalyst]

I have made resources inactive prior to zeroing out all remaining work in all
projects, and now the message about inactive resources keeps coming up every
time their projects are opened.

Any ideas how I can clean up the resource pool and stop the message?

 

[Jonathan Sofer [MVP]]

Whether you zero out remaining work before or after you inactivate the
resource doesn't make any difference other than the messages the PMs get
when they open the schedule. Either way, you have to deal with the fact
that inactive resources need to have their remaining work either zeroed out
or transferred to another resource to complete.

Jonathan

 

[ProjectAnalyst]

Thanks for the input Jonathan, I guess my expectation is that after I zero
out time and republish that the "you have inactive resources" message goes
away, but in my case it remains indefinitely.

There appears to be a problem with the "other projects" section in the
REsource Usage view, which doesn't ever want to change, even if I confirm
that those "other projects" don't have remaining time either.....

I'm trying to see if republishing all the projects will help resolve this.

 

[Jonathan Sofer [MVP]]

Is this in Project Server 2007? If so, it could be you are experiencing a
side effect of a bug I have seen, I describe it below:

Open Project Pro with Load Summary Resource Assignments checked.
Open a project schedule and using Resource Usage view, find a resource that
has work assigned to Other Projects and commitments.
Add the actual work and remaining work columns to the view.

THE REMAINING WORK IS NOT BEING CALCULATED CORRECTLY, IT IS SET TO WORK!

And because you are showing inactive resources with remaining work always
equaling work, you will always get this message about inactive resources
having remaining work even if they don't!

Microsoft has confirmed this as a bug:
"This issue has already been identified as a bug; product team has reviewed
this bug. Unfortunately the product team can only address this bug in the
next release of Microsoft Project, which is Project 14. At this point in the
P12 (Project 2007) support cycle, it is not feasible to fix this bug."

The only work around I can think of is to set connection state to manual and
turn off the option to "Load Summary Resource Assignments"

Hope that helps,

Jonathan Sofer

 

[ProjectAnalyst]

Jonathan, thanks for the tip, I believe you've described the situation
exactly.

Thanks for your help, at least I have some peace of mind that I've done all
I can to fix it.

 

[Jonathan Sofer [MVP]]

You are welcome. Turns out that Microsoft is planning on releasing Service
Pack 2 for 2007 Microsoft Office System (including Project Server) between
February and April 2009. It will contain both client and server updates so
there is still an off chance this issue will be handled within the 2007
version.

Jonathan Sofer

 

[Jonathan Sofer [MVP]]

You are welcome. Turns out that Microsoft is planning on releasing Service
Pack 2 for 2007 Microsoft Office System (including Project Server) between
February and April 2009. It will contain both client and server updates so
there is still an off chance this issue will be handled within the 2007
version.

Jonathan Sofer