MS Project Server 2007 - Error ID: 23000

[pmrs]

Hello,
We have been starting to this crop up more frequently in the last few weeks
and don't have a very good way of fixing it. It happens randomly when a user
tries to publish a project. I did some online searching to find only 2 posts
on possible fixes. The only one that seemed to work was to copy the entire
project to a blank one, publish the blank project, and start pasting tasks
back in to see which one breaks when publishing. This works OK except that
as soon as one breaks it, you have to re-delete all of the tasks, publish the
blank project, get error 26005, force check-in, etc. It takes a few hours to
fix a project where this happens with all of those steps.

Has anyone else had this? Is there a better way to fix it? Does anyone
know why this happens?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

 

[James Fraser]

Hello,
We have been starting to this crop up more frequently in the last few weeks
and don't have a very good way of fixing it. It happens randomly when a user
tries to publish a project. I did some online searching to find only 2 posts
on possible fixes. The only one that seemed to work was to copy the entire
project to a blank one, publish the blank project, and start pasting tasks
back in to see which one breaks when publishing. This works OK except that
as soon as one breaks it, you have to re-delete all of the tasks, publish the
blank project, get error 26005, force check-in, etc. It takes a few hours to
fix a project where this happens with all of those steps.

Has anyone else had this? Is there a better way to fix it? Does anyone
know why this happens?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

I don't have my notes handy, but if this is the error I think it is
(Publish fails at 93% ?) then here's my 2 cents.

In some cases for this error, you can save the project to a local file
and open that. Then you can save the file as .xml. If the data you are
trying to save has a significant error, then Project Pro will crash.
Open up the previously saved .mpp and delete the resources from the
project. Try saving as .xml. If project doesn't crash, then you know
the problem is a resource or an assignment. If so, open up the .mpp,
delete half of the resources, try to save as .xml. Proceed like this
to find the problematic area of the project.

Of course, this depends on the "Feature" that Project Pro will crash
when trying to save this project as XML. That has been the case most
of the time that I have run into this problem.


James Fraser

 

[pmrs]

Hi James,
Thanks for your feedback! I'm guessing then that it's a resource. Someone
else had mentioned to try saving as an .xml, which I just tried and much
crashing ensued. My concern is now removing the resources, since they will
then lose their hours booked to the job (which go towards the employees bonus
payout!), without having to manually write down and then reenter all of the
hours.

Do you know what is causing the problem with the resource or a way to
prevent it?

Thanks again. I at least feel a bit closer to being able to fix the problem!

Alyssa

 

[James Fraser]

crashing ensued. My concern is now removing the resources, since they will
then lose their hours booked to the job (which go towards the employees bonus
payout!), without having to manually write down and then reenter all of the
hours.

You can do all of this with a .mpp that you save on your local
computer, so then you can probably isolate it down to a particular
assignment (one resource on one task.) Deleting just this on the
production / published project will minimize the effect on the project
as a whole.

Do you know what is causing the problem with the resource or a way to
prevent it?

I'd really welcome others' input on this as I've only got guesses: It
seems to be something in the remaining work is getting screwed up.
Twice I've seen negative remaining work on the bad assignment.
Correcting that in Project Pro did not resolve the problem with the
project though.

Thanks again. I at least feel a bit closer to being able to fix the problem!

Good luck...
James Fraser

 

[pmrs]

James,
More good info! Well, I tried removing all resources and adding them back
one task at a time, but none of them seemed to be a problem. I was able to
add them back in, publishing along the way, and didn't have any errors. I
don't know if merely removing and adding back the resource would fix it, but
I'm still puzzled.

If anyone has an idea as to why this problem with resources might happen,
please let me know so that we can try to avoid it.

Thanks, James!

 

[Mike Mahoney]

James,
More good info! Well, I tried removing all resources and adding them back
one task at a time, but none of them seemed to be a problem. I was able to
add them back in, publishing along the way, and didn't have any errors. I
don't know if merely removing and adding back the resource would fix it, but
I'm still puzzled.

If anyone has an idea as to why this problem with resources might happen,
please let me know so that we can try to avoid it.

Thanks, James!








- Show quoted text -

James

This problem occurs when there is a corrupt assignment\task, and is
often down to one assignment on one task. An indicator is the My Task
page containing the problem assignment may return an error, so if you
can identify the individual it helps narrow down the problem. Two
possible approaches: at the task level set publish = no, then
progressively set it to yes, publishing until it fails - can be very
tedious with a big project. Another indicator is to open Task Usage
view and compare the work value in the work column with work in the
timephased section (display cumulative work and set calendar to
years). If there is a difference then the task with the difference is
the problem. Note it is not always the resource assignment which is
the problem, the task itself may have issues. Suggest you delete the
task and recreate. If all else fails save plan offline and the
overwrite online plan.

regards

Mike

 

[James Fraser]

This problem occurs when there is a corrupt assignment\task, and is
often down to one assignment on one task. An indicator is the My Task
page containing the problem assignment may return an error, so if you
can identify the individual it helps narrow down the problem. Two
possible approaches: at the task level set publish = no, then
progressively set it to yes, publishing until it fails - can be very
tedious with a big project. Another indicator is to open Task Usage
view and compare the work value in the work column with work in the
timephased section (display cumulative work and set calendar to
years). If there is a difference then the task with the difference is
the problem. Note it is not always the resource assignment which is
the problem, the task itself may have issues. Suggest you delete the
task and recreate. If all else fails save plan offline and the
overwrite online plan.

I'm pretty clear where the problem is, I'd love to know why it
happens. If there's some activity that I can suggest that PM's avoid
to reduce the likelihood of the problem, I'd be really happy. (I
strongly suspect that it's something that should work fine, but for
whatever reason, is failing. Something like accepting two task updates
from different resources with different % complete on the same task or
something like that.)

Also, earlier in the thread I gave a method to determine what
assignment is causing the problem that is much faster than repeatedly
publishing the project. It involves saving the project to a .mpp which
can be opened quickly, and then saving repeatedly as a .xml. This save
will crash when the corrupt assignment is included. The crash and
recovery can happen in < 15 seconds on many workstations instead of
the wait for the publish, so this should speed up the process quite a
bit.


James Fraser

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

One cause that I've been able to isolate is adding a resource assignment to
a task that has already started. You can reliably produce assignment
corruption this way, and, in some environments, it is such a common
requirement during project execution, that assignment corruption appears to
be rampant. In environments where resource assignments remain relatively
static, assignment corruption is low. This is perhaps the most debilitating
bug in the system. The workaround: When you need to add a resource to a
started task, rather than adding it to the existing task, close the existing
task and assign all resources to a new replacement task.

Does this sound like a reasonable explanation for your environment?

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com

 

[pmrs]

Thanks for all of your input!

Gary,
This is definitely happening at our company...often. We frequently (as in
multiple times a day) have people that weren't originally scheduled to tasks
that need to be added. And a lot of the time, although not all the time,
this does corrupt the task. My Tasks is unavailable, the whole 9 yards.
We've actually brought this up with Microsoft and they were finally able to
duplicate it, but haven't found a reason or fix for it, to my knowledge.

However, this doesn't seem to be the same problem as in these particular
projects that I'm talking about. We aren't seeing any corrupt tasks in our
usual query and My Tasks isn't breaking for anyone. The Project just fails
to publish until I locate the task, delete, and manually reenter all the
information.

Since I first posted, I've had 3 or 4 more projects where this happened...

 

[Curtis Gibson]

We're using an external hosting company and they have some sort of query that
provides me a list of corrupted tasks and the resources associated with them.
It's been very helpful in locating the offending tasks.

 

[pmrs]

Is this query for corrupt tasks that cause My Tasks to be unavailable? If
so, that's the one that we have also, and it's worked fine for us as well.

I somehow have to identify the task the causes a whole project not to
publish. That's the issue we can't resolve reasonably at the moment.

 

[pmrs]

I think we have had a breakthrough! I started noticing that a lot of the
tasks that were causing the project publish to fail were marked as complete.
So, it seems like these tasks were complete, but someone was trying to edit
them in some way (haven't completely nailed that down yet). We've definitely
seen it several times now when a user is trying to change dates for a
completed task.

So, as long as you add more time to work or do something to re-open the
task, your problem should be solved - once you overwrite the one that's out
on the server now.

Hopefully that helps some other people! I'd love to hear if you begin to
notice the same thing.

PMRS