Task available for time entry

[Jeff Cecil]

This might belong in development but I'll try here first.

I need to make it so that the team member task view only makes tasks where
an actual start date has been entered by the project manager available for
hour entry. I have set up managed timesheet periods, but this still makes
every task in that range available. I don't see a way to further restrict
the hour entry fields.

Thanks for any insite

Jeff

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Jeff --

I know of no way to make this happen. What you are asking is simply not the
way that Project Server works. Sorry.

 

[mark.everett]

Jeff -

Dale is, as usual, correct. However, you can make it a "training and
performance" (Trademark 2003, Dale Howard) issue and do train your
project managers to do this:

When they publish the plan, publish the project plan only, either the
whole thing or parts of it.

When they publish the assignments, they should only publish those
assignments they want worked. They should use the Confirmed and
Response Pending Fields to indicate that the task has been published.
Your process might be that they publish the day before they want work
to start. This makes a little more work for the PM but if they use the
Confirmed and Response Pending fields, they should be able to manage
their plans very close to the way you propose.

Hope this helps,
Mark Everett | PMP
www.quantumpm.com

 

[Jeff Cecil]

Hey Dale and Mark,

Thanks for your reply Dale. I was going to launch into a long rant about
managed time, but I would be ranting up the wrong tree. I appreciate your
input.

Mark, thank you for that possible work around. I will play with it and see
if it is restrictive enough for our use. Having the PMs control that flow is
EXACTLY the level of detail we want them at. I need to see how that affects
bookings and baseline calculations, but as long as the baseline can be
established and booked without publishing the task assignements then it
should be viable.

Thanks both of you.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Jeff --

Marks workaround is a good one and I appreciate his mention of the "training
and performance" issue. The limitation of Mark's workaround is that if the
manager forgets to select only specific tasks, and accidentally publishes
the entire project, then there is no way to "unpublish" the task assignments
and remove them from each user's timesheet in PWA. Hope this helps.

 

[Jeff Cecil]

hehehehe, you beat me to it by about 30 seconds. Of course our test projects
are all completely published so....................... I was going to ask how
to "unpublish".

I also have followed your many observations of opportunties for "training
and performance" in other threads.

This process kind of bugs me though. It goes against everything I know
about managed time. One of the fundamentals is that you tell the members
when to work on task x, they DON'T tell you when they "get round to it".
Marks work around does work as long as no one screws up. But I still have a
definition problem I will need to overcome with a large number PMs/Execs and
engineering practices auditors. Not your problem. Just an observation.