PS 2007 Task Updates & Publishing

[Brian H]

I have noticed that once task updates are accepted by the PM in PWA, they
seem to be saved in the project plan but not published. It there an easy way
to tell if there is any unpublished updates to a project plan?

PS2007 does not take you to Project Pro when you are updating tasks like
PS2003 did, so PMs are forgetting to publish their updates.

Brian

 

[James Fraser]

I have noticed that once task updates are accepted by the PM in PWA, they
seem to be saved in the project plan but not published.  It there an easy way
to tell if there is any unpublished updates to a project plan?

PS2007 does not take you to Project Pro when you are updating tasks like
PS2003 did, so PMs are forgetting to publish their updates.

Brian

You can add the Last Published date to a Project Center view and
quickly look for projects that should be published.


James Fraser

 

[Brian H]

James,

I added the Last Published, Last Modified, and Update Needed to a Project
Center view, but still can not determine is there are any unpublished saved
changes for a project plan. The Last Modified and Last Published dates seem
to be the same. Do you know what drives the Last Modified date? (I was
hoping that is was the last time updates where saved.)

Brian

 

[James Fraser]

I added the Last Published, Last Modified, and Update Needed to a Project
Center view, but still can not determine is there are any unpublished saved
changes for a project plan.  The Last Modified and Last Published datesseem
to be the same.  Do you know what drives the Last Modified date?  (I was
hoping that is was the last time updates where saved.)

That would make sense, wouldn't it? The explanation is that PWA only
pulls the project information as of the last time a project was
published. So the modified date is the "Last modified" date as of the
last project publish. Which, of course, will always be within a few
seconds of the date of the last publish.

To get at whether the true last saved date is different than the last
published date, you will need to do some SQL reporting on one of the
"forbidden" databases, ProjectServer_Draft. There you can get the real
last saved time and last published time, but doing this is discouraged
by Microsoft. (Database structure may change, poorly written queries
may slow performance, &c.)

Even this, though, won't entirely answer your question about the
updates. Short of a moderate development effort, there isn't a way to
get at the information you want.


James Fraser

 

[Brian H]

James,

Thanks for giving it a shot. My problem is more of a training/process issue
to have the PMs remember to publish their projects after updating them. I
was hoping to give them an indicator when there was unpublished data in a
project plan.

Brian

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Brian H (and James) --

Excuse me for jumping into this thread, but I think your organization is
going down the wrong path with handling task updates. I strongly recommend
that every PM always accept task updates directly within Microsoft Project
2007. If you open an enterprise project that has pending task updates
awaiting approval, the software will tell you so. From there, you can
actually display the Task Updates page in PWA directly in the Microsoft
Project 2007 client, and can approve or reject each task update for that
project only. After applying the updates, the software will prompt you to
open the enterprise project to see what it looks like after applying the
updates. I strongly recommend that your PMs go immediately into variance
analysis to see where their project is off schedule, and to do plan revision
if needed. Then, every PM should SAVE AND PUBLISH the latest schedule
changes. There should NEVER be any doubt whether a project has been
published or not. This is a people and process issue. If you use the
process I have detailed for you, your organization will not have the type of
problem you are describing. Hope this helps.

 

[James Fraser]

On Oct 1, 1:03 pm, "Dale Howard [MVP]"

if needed.  Then, every PM should SAVE AND PUBLISH the latest schedule
changes.  There should NEVER be any doubt whether a project has been
published or not.  This is a people and process issue.  If you use the
process I have detailed for you, your organization will not have the typeof
problem you are describing.  Hope this helps.

I like your proposed process. But as we all know, telling every PM to
save and publish on every open or every update does not mean that
every project will be published on every save. It is a reasonable
requirement for an organization/PMO to see reports on the status of
updates, or at least which projects haven't been published since the
last save.

One of my pet peeves of the product is the inability to cleanly report
on some of these process details. It doesn't help that these were
available in PS 2003.


</venting>
James Fraser

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

James --

Thanks for venting, my friend! I agree with everything you said. If we
only had a magic wand...




On Oct 1, 1:03 pm, "Dale Howard [MVP]"

if needed. Then, every PM should SAVE AND PUBLISH the latest schedule
changes. There should NEVER be any doubt whether a project has been
published or not. This is a people and process issue. If you use the
process I have detailed for you, your organization will not have the type
of
problem you are describing. Hope this helps.

I like your proposed process. But as we all know, telling every PM to
save and publish on every open or every update does not mean that
every project will be published on every save. It is a reasonable
requirement for an organization/PMO to see reports on the status of
updates, or at least which projects haven't been published since the
last save.

One of my pet peeves of the product is the inability to cleanly report
on some of these process details. It doesn't help that these were
available in PS 2003.


</venting>
James Fraser

 

[Gary L. Chefetz]

Dale:

I got my Microsoft magic wand in the mail yesterday, I'll let you know how
it works after I get it to boot-up.

--
----------
Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
Project Server Training: http://www.projectservertraining.com
Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
Project Server Help Blog: http://www.projectserverhelp.com

 

[Brian H]

Dale & James,

Thanks for the ideas... I'm just trying to make it as painless as possible.
Maybe a magic wand will be included with the next release.

Brian

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Gary --

You are way too funny! When you get the magic wand to boot up, please alert
us if there are any bugs in the system...

 

[Gary L. Chefetz]

Yes, and it will wave away all of your project worries.

--
----------
Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
Project Server Training: http://www.projectservertraining.com
Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
Project Server Help Blog: http://www.projectserverhelp.com

 

[B Weed]

I think the following query would be the basis for an SRS report that
would give you a list of Projects that have "Accepted" time but the
plan not published since the time was accepted. Not sure if this is
the route you want to take, but if it is a possibility, it gives you
what you are looking for. The query also can be modified to find task
updates that are waiting for approval. However, it appears that since
the Infrastructure Upgrade and Aug CU have been installed, the
"Pending Approval" query returns some false positives. Possibly a DB
change. Still researching that.

The query runs against your published DB. I am not a seasoned SQL
expert so I'm not sure if the String_Type_UID is specific for my farm
and will have to be determined for yours of if this is the UID for any
installation.

SELECT Accepted = Case TR.ASSN_TRANS_ACTION_ENUM When 0 Then
'Pending' When 1 Then 'Accepted' When 2 Then 'Rejected' End,
IS_PUBLISHED = CASE WHEN P.WPROJ_LAST_PUB >
TR.ASSN_TRANS_SUBMIT_DATE THEN 'Yes' ELSE 'No' END,
A.TASK_NAME, P.PROJ_NAME, R.RES_NAME as "Resource", RB.RES_NAME as
"StatusManager", TR.ASSN_TRANS_SUBMIT_DATE
FROM dbo.MSP_ASSIGNMENT_TRANSACTIONS TR WITH(READPAST)
LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.MSP_CONVERSIONS C ON ((C.CONV_VALUE =
TR.ASSN_TRANS_ERROR_ENUM) AND (STRING_TYPE_UID = 'EB15F998-82B2-4e2e-
BFD4-BBF15AD90C23'))
LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.MSP_ASSIGNMENTS_SAVED A WITH(READPAST) ON
TR.ASSN_UID = A.ASSN_UID
LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.MSP_PROJECTS P ON A.PROJ_UID = P.PROJ_UID
LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.MSP_TASKS_SAVED TA ON TR.TASK_UID =
TA.TASK_UID
LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.MSP_PROJECT_RESOURCES R ON A.RES_UID =
R.RES_UID AND R.PROJ_UID = P.PROJ_UID
LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.MSP_PROJECT_RESOURCES RD ON
TR.ASSN_TRANS_DELEGATEE_RES_UID = RD.RES_UID AND P.PROJ_UID =
RD.PROJ_UID
LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.MSP_RESOURCES RD1 ON
TR.ASSN_TRANS_DELEGATEE_RES_UID = RD1.RES_UID
LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.MSP_PROJECT_RESOURCES RS ON
TR.ASSN_TRANS_SUBMITTER_RES_UID = RS.RES_UID AND P.PROJ_UID =
RS.PROJ_UID
LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.MSP_RESOURCES RS1 ON
TR.ASSN_TRANS_SUBMITTER_RES_UID = RS1.RES_UID
LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.MSP_RESOURCES RA ON
TR.ASSN_TRANS_APPROVER_RES_UID = RA.RES_UID
LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.MSP_RESOURCES RB ON A.WRES_UID_Manager =
RB.RES_UID
WHERE (TR.ASSN_TRANS_ACTION_ENUM = 1 and P.WPROJ_LAST_PUB <
TR.ASSN_TRANS_SUBMIT_DATE) and
RA.RES_NAME is not null
order by p.proj_name

 

[James Fraser]

I think the following query would be the basis for an SRS report that
would give you a list of Projects that have "Accepted" time but the
plan not published since the time was accepted.  Not sure if this is

....

Huge THANKS for this. We had dug into the Transaction table, and made
it some way into deserializing the binary data for the transaction
data, but got frustrated with the exercise. I can dig out my notes if
anyone wants to take a stab...

We hadn't revisited that in a while, but thank you for pointing out
that you _can_ report on whether updates are accepted or pending, you
just can't see what's in the updates. In many cases, just knowing that
the update is out there may be enough.

For anyone else looking at this code, make sure to remove the line
break in the middle of the String_type_UID. Also, to answer R Weed's
question, it looks like this is a standard String_Type_UID across
installs.


James Fraser