Start and End Dates - setting absolute?

[Pr4gm4tik]

It was suggested that I post this to the Project Server group after I posted
it in the general forum, but please know that I am actually trying to set the
start and end dates using Project Professional 2007, not on Project Server
using PSI.

I am inserting tasks into the project from another system using a .net
utility running against the Project Pro 2007 object model.

I need to set absolute start and end dates for tasks -- I do not want
Project Pro to change these dates for any reason. I have turned off
automatic calculation for the project, but it still seems to adjust the dates
as it seems fit.

The reason this is important is the project is being published to Proj
Server 2007, and tasks can only be auto-populated in the user's timesheet if
the task is scheduled within the timesheet period, so I need to make the date
range wide enough to cover all possible timesheet periods.

 

[Ben Howard]

Project will try and calculate the dates, you can't turn it off. The best
way forward is to set a constraint type, probably Must Start On, and then a
duration which spans the timesheet periods. Test this out to get it working
in Pro 1st. Remember project uses the calc duration = units * work to calc
all tasks...

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

It sounds as though you aren't planning on doing project management with the
tool. If this is the case, there are plenty of timesheet systems out there
that are much better than the one baked into Project Server.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com

 

[Pr4gm4tik]

This is true, although for a while there was some appeal that a project
manager could open the project in Project Pro 2007, edit resource assignments
for a particular task (without affecting the entire group, and so forth).

Do you have any suggestions for time tracking software which is robust, easy
to use, and provides a .Net programmable interface? Part of the task at hand
here is pulling data out of the existing system, and importing them as tasks
into the timesheet, leveraging the skills we have in house. I am leaning
strongly here toward writing our own because the fundamental problem to solve
is so simple and I have written time tracking systems in the past, but if
there is an out of box solution I would love to hear about it.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

I'm not fully understanding the challenge here, so I'm reluctant to give you
a recommendation.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com

 

[Pr4gm4tik]

In short, I was wondering if you had any recommendations on a simple web
based time tracking system that had a programmable interface (that can be
coded using .Net) since you had mentioned there were better solutions
available.

Trying not to complicate the above question, the particular challenge that
led to this request is the fact that Project Server can only auto-populate
timesheets if the task is scheduled during the same time period of the
timesheet. This means that in order to use Project Server, we would need to
set a very wide timespan for each task, because we don't know if the user
will be billing time against the task on next weeks timesheet or a timesheet
six months down the road. Because Project Professional's whole purpose is to
do the scheduling for you, and does things like adjust the start and end date
of the task based on the number of resources assigned to it, it means we
cannot just set the schedule date of the task and be done with it.

Since we're coming to the conclusion that Project Server is not well-suited
to such a simple time tracking scenario, I am open to other off-the-shelf
solutions before simply writing my own.

 

[Mike Mahoney]

In short, I was wondering if you had any recommendations on a simple web
based time tracking system that had a programmable interface (that can be
coded using .Net) since you had mentioned there were better solutions
available.

Trying not to complicate the above question, the particular challenge that
led to this request is the fact that Project Server can only auto-populate
timesheets if the task is scheduled during the same time period of the
timesheet. This means that in order to use Project Server, we would need to
set a very wide timespan for each task, because we don't know if the user
will be billing time against the task on next weeks timesheet or a timesheet
six months down the road. Because Project Professional's whole purpose is to
do the scheduling for you, and does things like adjust the start and end date
of the task based on the number of resources assigned to it, it means we
cannot just set the schedule date of the task and be done with it.

Since we're coming to the conclusion that Project Server is not well-suited
to such a simple time tracking scenario, I am open to other off-the-shelf
solutions before simply writing my own.

:





- Show quoted text -

PWA Timesheet allows you to Add lines to your timesheet at any time -
the task does not have to be planned in the current week.. With your
proposed approached if all activities are planned for all the time
then
a) you will have a very long timesheet.
b)you will have totally useless plans

regards

Mike

 

[Pr4gm4tik]

Thanks Mike,

First, please keep in mind the timesheet tracking we are trying to do is
simply to collect and report time against tasks - we are not using this
particular aspect of it for project planning so the schedules are irrelevant
to us; it's okay if the plans are totally useless.

Second, when we first started out, we thought the end user could simply hit
the Add Lines button to add their tasks. There are couple of issues with
this:

The legacy system we are pulling the tasks from organizes tasks in a tree
hierarchy, and some departments require that we keep this organization. This
is fine because we can use indentation to provide this tree, like:

Top Category
-----SubCategory
-------------Task

However, they also require that the task name = legacy system task id +
task description, so that the tasks actually look like this:

ABC1234578 - Task 1: Do something very important

However the task descriptions can grow potentially long horizontally, and
the Add Lines dialog is not wide enough to accomodate the majority of the
task descriptions once they are displayed in the dialog, and the dialog
cannot be resized, which means the user can only really identify the task by
it's ID, forcing them to continuously lookup the actual task description by
referring to the legacy system. Even without the lookup issue, users were
complaining about the process of having to add task lines every week. At
least with their existing process of using Excel timesheets, they could use
the previous weeks sheet as a starting point and make minor tweaks to it.

The answer to this seemed to be to autopopulate their timesheets with their
current assignments, and let the project manager delete tasks from the
project itself by republishing it to the server whenever the project had too
many obsolete tasks (ones no longer in use). But, of course the task only
autopopulates if it is scheduled within the time period of the timesheet.


:

PWA Timesheet allows you to Add lines to your timesheet at any time -
the task does not have to be planned in the current week.. With your
proposed approached if all activities are planned for all the time
then
a) you will have a very long timesheet.
b)you will have totally useless plans

regards

Mike

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

I'm not certain that this will do everything the way you want, but have a
look at:

http://www.timecontrol.com


--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com

 

[Pr4gm4tik]

I'll have a look, thanks.

I'm not certain that this will do everything the way you want, but have a
look at:

http://www.timecontrol.com


--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com

 

[Mike Mahoney]

Thanks Mike,

First, please keep in mind the timesheet tracking we are trying to do is
simply to collect and report time against tasks - we are not using this
particular aspect of it for project planning so the schedules are irrelevant
to us; it's okay if the plans are totally useless.

Second, when we first started out, we thought the end user could simply hit
the Add Lines button to add their tasks. There are couple of issues with
this:

The legacy system we are pulling the tasks from organizes tasks in a tree
hierarchy, and some departments require that we keep this organization. This
is fine because we can use indentation to provide this tree, like:

Top Category
-----SubCategory
-------------Task

However, they also require that the task name = legacy system task id +
task description, so that the tasks actually look like this:

ABC1234578 - Task 1: Do something very important

However the task descriptions can grow potentially long horizontally, and
the Add Lines dialog is not wide enough to accomodate the majority of the
task descriptions once they are displayed in the dialog, and the dialog
cannot be resized, which means the user can only really identify the task by
it's ID, forcing them to continuously lookup the actual task description by
referring to the legacy system. Even without the lookup issue, users were
complaining about the process of having to add task lines every week. At
least with their existing process of using Excel timesheets, they could use
the previous weeks sheet as a starting point and make minor tweaks to it.

The answer to this seemed to be to autopopulate their timesheets with their
current assignments, and let the project manager delete tasks from the
project itself by republishing it to the server whenever the project had too
many obsolete tasks (ones no longer in use). But, of course the task only
autopopulates if it is scheduled within the time period of the timesheet.





- Show quoted text -

I sympathise with your issue and work around. I have similar problem
with many users wanting a copy button to repeat last week's "support
tasks" rather than having to do add lines process. Prior to PS 2007
you could add resources to a fixed duration task at 0% percent effort
- this creates an assignment for the period but no work. However using
this technique in 2007 turns the task into a milestone, losing the
assignment time period you wanted and failing to populate the
timesheet.

So your options are limited. 2 suggestions are:
Option 1 - lose the structure and use add lines - if you are building
the plan programmatically then use codes rather than indentation. You
can use Group to simulate structure
Option 2 - plan assignments - dictate task start date either by
constraint or project start date; make it fixed durated for a very
long period - assign eache resource at 0.1%. When task is completed/
closed set publish field to No.

regards

Mike