PWA Timesheet View won't display duration or % complete.

[Matt Kennedy]

We are just starting to look into the capability in PWA that will allow our
project team members to update % work complete on thier assigned tasks. I
found that under Admin > Manage Views I can tailor the "Timesheet View". I
have added the Duration and % Complete columns to the view but they neither
column will display any data in them. Being able to show the current task
duration is the more important of the two to show. I have done a Collaborate

Publish > All Information from the project plan a number of times to be

sure that was not the problem. I also logged out and logged back in to PWA
(as the team member). Any thoughts on why certain columns remain blank?

 

[mark.everett]

Matt -

First, you need to republish projects after you add those fields in the
views. You also may need to add them to published fields. Try this:

1. Open Project Professional 2003.
2. Go to Tools > Customize > Published Fields
3. Add % Work Complete (if it's not already there) and Duration. If
you want your resources to be able to alter actual start and actual
finish, add those too and make sure you check the "Allow Resource to
Change Field" for both. If you don't let them adjust actual start and
finish, Project will, of course, assume that work started and finished
as planned.
4. Click OK.
5. Republish.

That should handle the issue. Let us know if it doesn't.

Mark S. Everett | PMP

 

[Matt Kennedy]

Mark, thanks! That seemed to get me part way. It seems now these fields will
display a vlaue in PWA but only if a change of some type is made to a
published field. Example, I open project pro, open the project and change a
task name by adding one character that task in PWA will now have the duration
and % complete fields populated. However all other tasks in PWA will still
have no values in these fields.

This implies to me that if I want these columns populated in PWA I need to
touch every task in every plan with some sort of change. The problem is we
have 20 plans with upwards of 1000 lines each with many diff assigned
resources. Do you happen to know a way I can force the publishing and
poplulating of these two fields in all tasks on PWA without having to do this
manual operation?

Thanks a million!
-Matt

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Matt --

Mark missed a step you need to know. You will need to open each project,
add the fields to the list of Published fields, and then click Collaborate -
Publish - Republish Assignments. The act of republishing the assignments
will "push" the content of the new published fields to each user's timesheet
page in PWA. Again, you must do this for every project. Hope this helps.

 

[Matt Kennedy]

Bingo! Thats it! Its all there! Excellent. Thank you both very much!

p.s. I was hoping that adding those additional fields to publish to the
enterprise global would result in them being added to the 20+ existing plans.
Guess not. Too bad.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Matt --

Adding the fields as published fields in the Enterprise Global file would
not work, as this is not the purpose of the Enterprise Global. Rather, it
serves two purposes:

1. It is your organization's "library" of custom enterprise objects, such
as Fields, Views, Tables, Filters, Groups, etc.
2. It specifies your organization's default currency

If you want to include the extra fields as published fields in every future
project, I would recommend you add them now to your enterprise project
templates. Otherwise, you still need to add them manually to every existing
project. Hope this helps.

 

[Matt Kennedy]

Thank you Dale. Point regarding the enterprise global noted. I havn't yet
tackled the subject of project templates but it is high on the list (higher
now). I have a lot to learn yet. If there is one thing that I have learned
about this product is that it represents a very challenging combination of
significant breadth and only limited documentation. I think we have achieved
a lot over the last 6 months considering we forged ahead after losing our
funding for consulting assistance at the last minute last fall. You, Mark,
and the many others in this forum have been a tremendous help. Many thanks
once again.