S
Stephan Steiner
Hi
We're moving from an Excel based Timesheet to Project Server.
Besides the usual projects with planning and everything, we also have
"Cases" (customer calls, tells extension 1234 can't call any cellphones
anymore.. please fix it"), so tasks where we have no idea how long they'll
take beforehand. So what we're doing is adding a new task to a "Case"
project managed by our dispatching, and the system engineer books hours onto
that task, as much as is needed.
The number of such tasks per employee and day can vary a great deal.. some
may get none during weeks, others may get a dozen a day (usually the guy on
standby). We currently are facing a huge backlash from employees with many
such tasks in terms of "when should a task disappear from the timesheet".
PWA has a hide task functionality, but which only allows one task to be
selected at a time. Since one Case consists of 3 tasks (regular work, travel
time, and time spent due to bugs in the software....), the standard hide
functionality is insufficient.
And, it appears each time the project manager publishes changed and new
assignments, those hidden tasks magically reappear.
So, in looking at what happens if a task is hidden, I found that all it
takes to make a line in the timesheet disappear is set
MSP_WEB_ASSIGNMENTS.WASSN_REMOVED_BY_RESOURCE to 1 for the assignment in
Question. So I wrote a little web form where people can select all tasks
they want to be removed from their timesheet, then click one button and
that's that. Conversely, they also have a list of hidden tasks where they
can make one re-appear (because we all know they're going to hide tasks they
don't want to be hidden, change their minds, etc).
So far so good... of course that wasn't enough.
So we thought up another idea: How about if we automatically hide all tasks
where remaining work is set to 0? The appropriate fild would be
ASSN_REM_WORK also int he MSP_WEB_ASSIGNMENTS table. Unfortunately, that has
a rather nasty sideeffect: if 8 hours are assigned to a task, and 8 hours
are reported by the resource, ASSN_REM_WORK goes down to 0, and so the task
is being hidden even though the resource didn't explicitly ask for it to
happen.. the resource expects the task to be hidden if he/she sets the
remaining work to 0 on his/her own.
So, I'm fresh out of ideas at this point and was wondering if any of you had
a good idea how the resource should "close" tasks so that they can be
automatically removed from the timesheet (and that mechanism needs to be as
foolproof that I can initiate a beer tax for every resource that has his
tasks disappear by their own mistake and screams at me even though it was
their own fault), and how I can prevent them from re-appearing when a
project is published. If it's good enough, I might even let you in on the
beer tax if you live in the area
Regards
Stephan
We're moving from an Excel based Timesheet to Project Server.
Besides the usual projects with planning and everything, we also have
"Cases" (customer calls, tells extension 1234 can't call any cellphones
anymore.. please fix it"), so tasks where we have no idea how long they'll
take beforehand. So what we're doing is adding a new task to a "Case"
project managed by our dispatching, and the system engineer books hours onto
that task, as much as is needed.
The number of such tasks per employee and day can vary a great deal.. some
may get none during weeks, others may get a dozen a day (usually the guy on
standby). We currently are facing a huge backlash from employees with many
such tasks in terms of "when should a task disappear from the timesheet".
PWA has a hide task functionality, but which only allows one task to be
selected at a time. Since one Case consists of 3 tasks (regular work, travel
time, and time spent due to bugs in the software....), the standard hide
functionality is insufficient.
And, it appears each time the project manager publishes changed and new
assignments, those hidden tasks magically reappear.
So, in looking at what happens if a task is hidden, I found that all it
takes to make a line in the timesheet disappear is set
MSP_WEB_ASSIGNMENTS.WASSN_REMOVED_BY_RESOURCE to 1 for the assignment in
Question. So I wrote a little web form where people can select all tasks
they want to be removed from their timesheet, then click one button and
that's that. Conversely, they also have a list of hidden tasks where they
can make one re-appear (because we all know they're going to hide tasks they
don't want to be hidden, change their minds, etc).
So far so good... of course that wasn't enough.
So we thought up another idea: How about if we automatically hide all tasks
where remaining work is set to 0? The appropriate fild would be
ASSN_REM_WORK also int he MSP_WEB_ASSIGNMENTS table. Unfortunately, that has
a rather nasty sideeffect: if 8 hours are assigned to a task, and 8 hours
are reported by the resource, ASSN_REM_WORK goes down to 0, and so the task
is being hidden even though the resource didn't explicitly ask for it to
happen.. the resource expects the task to be hidden if he/she sets the
remaining work to 0 on his/her own.
So, I'm fresh out of ideas at this point and was wondering if any of you had
a good idea how the resource should "close" tasks so that they can be
automatically removed from the timesheet (and that mechanism needs to be as
foolproof that I can initiate a beer tax for every resource that has his
tasks disappear by their own mistake and screams at me even though it was
their own fault), and how I can prevent them from re-appearing when a
project is published. If it's good enough, I might even let you in on the
beer tax if you live in the area
Regards
Stephan