Task Names in Master Schedule

[J Burford Fields]

When I combine projects into a master schedule and look at resource
utilization, I can see what tasks a resource has been obligated to.
The problem is that this view does not tell me which of the projects
the task is in and if we have tasks with similar names in different
projects this can be quite confusing. I looked to see if there was a
column to add, like project name, but that only provided the name of
the master project. While naming conventions for tasks that will cite
their project name will help, this seems a bit silly in an automated
system.

Does anybody have a better way of breaking out the tasks under resource
usage by sub-project?

J

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

J --

You are using the approach that I personally use. I recommend the use of
two additional columns in the Resource Usage view:

1. Project
2. Task Summary Name

Hope this helps.

 

[J Burford Fields]

I'll check it out, thanks.

J --

You are using the approach that I personally use. I recommend the use of
two additional columns in the Resource Usage view:

1. Project
2. Task Summary Name

Hope this helps.

 

[J Burford Fields]

That is indeed an improvement. Task Summary Name provides more
visibility into the sub-project, it could still be improved with a
column that holds the sub-project's name, but I can understand how that
might be a bit of a challenge to the programmers.

Project is just giving me the name of the Master Project, which may be
a good idea as who knows where ones print-out might end up.

J

 

[J Burford Fields]

Project was just giving me the name of the master project because I had
PASTED the sub-project rather than linking to it.

The problem I now see again, linking to projects, is that I'm not
getting a consolidated resource usage view when I look at projects,
off-line. Resouce Usage view shows each resource multiple times, once
for each project they are in that is linked in.

We don't have modeling, so I'm trying to find a way to be able to
experiment with different resource loading, using mpp files, without
worrying about how it might affect a production project on the server.

Is there a way to do this offline?

J

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

J --

By chance does your master project consist of a series of .mpp files? If
so, you are seeing the default behavior of a master project created without
using a shared resource pool file. The default behavior is that each
resource is listed individually from every subproject, which means that you
have many duplicate resource names.

If you recreate your master project using only enterprise projects in the
Project Server database, this problem will disappear. You can create the
master project quickly by selecting the row headers for each subproject in
the Project Center page in PWA and then clicking the Open button. You can
also save the master project as an .mpp file if you need to keep working
with it beyond the current session. Hope this helps.

 

[J Burford Fields]

Awesome!

I suspect you or somebody else had already told me part of that once
earlier. Must remember to create new Master's from the global pool....
This might be a way to solve another problem, for us, now that I think
of it.

J