Team Member Task Rejections Keep Reappearing

[jearley]

We are on Project Server 2003 SP2a and client SP2. We have a group
using project server who needs the ability to reject tasks so that
those particular tasks no longer appear on their timesheets. Scenario:
Team member is assigned a task. They know they will never work on
this task and immediately click "Reject" for this task. This team
member has never logged time to the task.

The project manager is able to see and accept the task rejection by the
team member. The PM then applies the task rejection to the project
plan. HOWEVER, after project processes the update, the team member is
STILL assigned to the task and still has the same amount of work.

Expected behavior: We're expecting after the PM processes the task
rejection that project would then remove that team member as being
assigned to the task and re-allocate the work to others assigned on the
task. If no others were assigned, the work and the assignment would be
entirely removed from the task.

Actual behavior: Project says that it has applied the update and
prompts you to save the file. However, everything looks EXACTLY the
same as it did prior to accpeting the task rejection. Therefore, when
you publish the plan again, the same task re-appears on the team
members timesheet again, as if it were never rejected in the first
place.

Is the expected behavior not correct? According to what little
information I could find in the various admin, PM and TM guides, it
implies this is what should happen.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

jearley --

Unfortunately, what you are seeing is the default behavior of Project Server
2003 when a team member rejects a task assignment. When the PM accepts the
task rejection, he/she must still manually remove the resource from the task
in Microsoft Project Professional 2003, reassign another resource, and then
republish the project. Hope this helps.

 

[jearley]

Thank you very much for the quick response! It does help in that now I
don't have to go searching for what the actual functionality should
be...

Seems like quite a fancy button for what boils down to being an
notification process. Good intentions not quite completed.

Jeanine

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Jeanine --

Because of the half-baked functionality of the Reject button, I recommend to
all clients that they tell team members NOT to ever use the Reject button to
reject a task. Instead, I recommend they tell team members to use any other
communication process to reject a task, such as e-mailing, calling, or
meeting with the project manager, and let the PM remove the resource from
the task in the Microsoft Project plan. Hope this helps.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Jeanine:

Your expectation that Project should remove the resource is quite reasonable
although it would be difficult to determine which task(s) contain unassigned
work. Your expectation that it should also know how or to whom it should
redistribute the work, well that's a stretch. I think we'll see a better
leveling algorithm long before the work redistribution logic is built.<g>

--


Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
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