Project Server (annoying) emails

[Doc]

Has anyone done customization of the (cryptic) emails that Project
Server (spews) disseminates?

Also, has anyone figured out a way to turn all email for specific
projects (e.g. the Admin project sends a (very annoying) email to
everyone allocated to the "Vacation" task every time the project owner
accepts Updates into the plan).

I hope that Microsoft will provide a customized email interface in
future releases / or better yet the next Service Pack.

Regards
Doc

 

[Jonathan B]

I hear your pain. It's a hugh problem at all of my clients.

The only solutions that I can find (without modifying the code in Project
Server) is to either:
1. Have each user turn off email notifications on PWA. This stinks because
there are some update emails that the team member might have wanted that are
no longer sent. Project Server does not allow you to turn off notifications
for a specific project or for a specific event (some say that's a bug, some
say that's just bad design).

2. If using OUTLOOK, create a SPAM filter for email from Project Server
that contain the names of the offending project plans. Since you can't stop
the emails from being sent, at least you can redirect them to the junk bucket
in OUTLOOK.

What really stinks about either method is that they both have to be done at
the user's desktop. In my situation, there are about 1000 users.

 

[Reid McTaggart]

Some message text can be changed by modifying contents of Project Server
tables, but some text is hard-coded and MS does not share the sourcecode
necessary to effect a change. The message parts contained in tables are
fragments that Server assembles into sentences. Which fragments go to which
messages takes some tracing, and depends on the language (English, French,
etc.) selected.

 

[Melanie]

We are dealing with the same thing here. I want to find a way to not send
out email notifications on completed tasks when a project is updated. This
is a big deal here. The users don't mind the messages, however they still
think there is something to do with the tasks which are complete since they
received the email. The end user clicks the link in the email and update
again. This becomes a circle of events which requires a phone call or three
to make it stop.

Maybe if the link was removed or modified in the email notification it would
assist. I thought of a couple of different ways to modify the notificaiton
1. If the link would take the user to his current task list it may help.
2. Remove the link completely providing different instructions on how to
update any open tasks.
3. Modify the information in the notification on what tasks are really
needing updates and those which do not need updates.

Example of the notification when a project is modified. This task is
complete however the message states the task need progress updates.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The following tasks need progress updates.


Project: 09-01-04 Chicago - Thrifty

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

It doesn't sound to me like you have the same problem. It does sound as
though you're changing the project in a way that changes the schedule of
completed tasks. If this is the case, you need to end the behavior that is
causing the dates for completed tasks to change. If you're going to allow
this type of behavior, then you must teach your PMs to deselect the send
email notifications when they publish the resulting schedule changes.