Publish projects + All Information

[Paul Linscott]

Question 1
Is there a way to see the publish status of a project in PWA i.e.

Published - tasks that have been assigned to resources
Published (saved) - project just saved in the DB - tasks have not been
assigned

There is a "last published" field, but this shows me the date when the
project was saved and/or published. Seems MS does not make a distinction
between a saved project and a true published project.

Question 2
What does the Collaborate/Publish/All Information do? Does it perform both
New and changed assignments and Project plan? It appears that the All
Information
takes the system must less time to perform this task than it does for the
New and Changed Assignments - both projects used were identical and no one
was on the test system at the time of the test.

thx
Paul

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Paul --

Question 1:

There is no easy way to determine which tasks have been published and which
have not in a project. Toward this end, I created a special Assignment view
that shows the published task assignments for each project. Here's how to
create a similar View for your own use:

1. Log into PWA with administrator permissions
2. Click Admin - Manage views
3. Click the Add view button and select the Assignment type
4. Give your new view a name such as msPE Published Tasks
5. Add the following fields in the following order to the Displayed fields
list:

Task Name
Resource Name
Project Manager
Start
Finish
Project

6. In the Default Group, Sort (Optional) section, set the Group by pick
list to Project
7. In the Categories section, add this View to the My Organization, My
Projects, and My Resources categories
8. Click the Save Changes button

To apply this new view, navigate to the Resource Center and then click View
resource assignments in the sidepane on the left. Select your resources
(select all of them if you have 100 or less) and then click the Apply
button. Select your new view from the Choose a view selector and then click
the Add/Remove resources tab to collapse the options at the top of the page.
This view will reveal only the published assignments for the non-Generic
(human) resources in each project.

Question #2:

Collaborate - Publish - All Information does two publishing operations in a
single action. It performs Collaborate - Publish Project Plan and
Collaborate - Publish - New and Changed Assignments. Hope this helps.

--
Dale A. Howard [MVP]
Enterprise Project Trainer/Consultant
Denver, Colorado
http://www.msprojectexperts.com
"We wrote the books on Project Server"

 

[Jonathan Sofer - MCP]

1) I don't know of a better way to see this other than what Dale said. But
I can tell you why the "last published" field is always populated on
projects saved to the server. This is because when you save a project to
the server for the first time and close Project Professional without doing
any publishing, there is actually a Publish>Project Plan done in the
background without the users knowledge.

That is why your new project will always show up in Project Center after you
save a new project and exit Project Professional but will not show
assignments until you do a Publish All.

2) I think that maybe in your experience Publish>All Information seems to
come back quicker but it is doing more in the background.

 

[Paul Linscott]

Excellent, I created the view, it helps a lot.

Thx for the info

cheers
Paul

 

[Paul Linscott]

Jonathan,

Thanks for the info.

ciao

Paul

1) I don't know of a better way to see this other than what Dale said. But
I can tell you why the "last published" field is always populated on
projects saved to the server. This is because when you save a project to
the server for the first time and close Project Professional without doing
any publishing, there is actually a Publish>Project Plan done in the
background without the users knowledge.

That is why your new project will always show up in Project Center after you
save a new project and exit Project Professional but will not show
assignments until you do a Publish All.

2) I think that maybe in your experience Publish>All Information seems to
come back quicker but it is doing more in the background.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Paul --

You are more than welcome, my friend!

 

[Kevin W Flanagan]

Actually Jonathan, your administrator can set it NOT to publish when a
project is just saved to the tool.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Kevin --

Out of curiosity, how?

 

[Timothy Soh]

Dale,

I am using Project 2007 and do not see Collaborate/Publish as a selection.

What could be the reason?

Timothy Soh

 

[Jonathan Sofer]

Timothy,

MSPS 2007 simplified the publishing options and there is now only 1 publish
option and it is located under File>Publish

Jonathan