Task Approval

[Dehun]

Recently we had a problem where a Project Manager had to approve more
than 60 task from the task approval screen in Project Server 2007
Project Web Access. When they hit select all and then Preview on the
Task Approval Page they got an error on the page. So i recreated the
issue in a different environment and possibly found out that Task
Updates has a limitation of 54 Task That can be approved at once from
that screen. I found out that this is because Internet explorer has a
limitation of 2083 characters that you can place in a post or get for
a URL. So that relates to this case because when you select the button
to approve or preview, it takes all of the task selected and copies
there 36 + 1 character UID into the URL plus the URL Information
before that. In my case I had:

(75 Characters + (55 Task * (36 characters +1) ) ) = 2110 Characters


So since 2110 is greater than the 2083 it errors out. So this means
that we have a limitation on the amount of records we can submit. One
Workaround we are considering is using Automatic rules for approvals.
I was wondering had anyone else ran into this problem?

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Dehun --

A better approach, in my opinion, is to approve all tasks updates from
within Microsoft Project Professional 2007 for one project at a time. This
the way the PM can immediately see the results of the update, and can then
analyze variance and make plan revisions. This approach would limit the
number of task updates seen on the Task Updates page, since the PM would
only see the updates for the particular project that is open. Just a
thought. Hope this helps.

 

[John Sitka]

The "accept all" from PWA 2003 and then allow 10->30 projects to
accept their updates in one big grind is a vital "feature".

Does this limitation come into play only on a 2007 "Preview" page or
on the equivalent of the 2003 Updates(page) ->accept all->Update(button)?

 

[Dehun]

Dehun --

A better approach, in my opinion, is to approve all tasks updates from
within Microsoft Project Professional 2007 for one project at a time. This
the way the PM can immediately see the results of the update, and can then
analyze variance and make plan revisions. This approach would limit the
number oftaskupdates seen on theTaskUpdates page, since the PM would
only see the updates for the particular project that is open. Just a
thought. Hope this helps.

Well this particular project had over 60 approvals alone. So even when
they tried to approve or preview in Project Professional, they still
got an error. But we have suggested to our project managers to only 50
task at a time or to use the Approval rules to serve as a "Accept
All". We have actually opened up a case with microsoft and they were
able to replicate the errors we were getting. They are saying they
will address it in a hot fix or maybe the next service pack for
Project 2007.

 

[Dehun]

The "accept all" from PWA 2003 and then allow 10->30 projects to
accept their updates in one big grind is a vital "feature".

Does this limitation come into play only on a 2007 "Preview" page or
on the equivalent of the 2003 Updates(page) ->accept all->Update(button)?

"Dale Howard [MVP]" <dale(dot)howard(at)msprojecexperts(dot)com> wrote in messagenews:%[email protected]...

Well this error will occur when you try to render the 2007 Preview
page and on the 2007 Select All -> Accept if there are more than 54
task. The reason this happens is because even when you hit the Select
All -> Accept it still gives you the option to Preview from that box
that comes up. So these two buttons still are providing the same
functionality that causes the error.

 

[John Sitka]

Thanks for the clarity, another chirp to add to my
"no need to upgrade yet" arguement.