[TimeSheet] Add line picker showing not assigned tasks

[Jeff1er]

Hello to all,

I'm currently investigating on a TimeSheet setup for following
requirements, but I admit I get stuck to do it without customization:
- I create an "administrative project" with no task, and a 2 years
duration
- I create a category with rights on this project
- I create a group with rights on this category

I want that users members of this group can select, with the add line
picker, the top level task of my administrative project to apply
effort against it, even if they have not been assigned to this
project.

The context is easy; avoiding this project resources assignment when I
import daily, with an interface we built, many resources that are
added automatically in my group;

Do you think it is feasible and how ?

Thanks in advance for your ideas

 

[Jonathan Sofer [MVP]]

I'm assuming you are on Project Server 2007. If you add the resources to
the project team, they will automatically get this project level line item
added to their timesheets during timesheet creation if they create their
timesheets at the project level.

If they create their projects at the task level and then do the add line,
I'm not certain if having them on the project team would be enough for them
to see the project level line item in the pick list but my guess is that it
would be there.

Jonathan

 

[Jeff1er]

Thank you Jonathan!
Yes, I forgot to mention: this is on EPM2007.

1) This is just what I want to avoid; I want to avoid adding them on
the project team, cause it imply a huge workload in my case: this
is on a +1500 resources EPM instance where the turnover is high.
Therefore, I want that everytime resources are created (automatically
by an interface already in production, from an HR datasource), they
can see this particular project in the line picker.
Another workaround should be to automate the resource assignment to
this project... but this is another story

2) I confirm your second hypothesis upon my testing. More, even if
they are not assigned to any task, being part of the project team is
sufficient to see the top level task in the line picker and applying
effort against the poject.

To resume, the goal is provide a way to make some timesheeting on
activities such as customer support, or transversal jobs, not
dedicated to a specific project, and then to provide reporting on
that, and also to extract timesheet data to be loaded in financial
systems (SAP) for capitalizing purpose.

We already do that for project activities, and we also use
administrative time, bu in this case the workload is not taken in
account in resource workload or availability reports and, as we cannot
make any custom fields for administative time, we cannot assign to
them individual financial codification data that we do for projects...

Thanks again for your reply !

Jeff

 

[David Ducolon]

Hi Jeff,

After reading this last post, you should just use the "Unverified tasks".
This lets you pick a name and you can add the project name into the label.
Your administrator should create a billing type/admin category of "Support"
so you can later group all of these tasks together and determine what the
cost of doing business is. that is one of the main goals of this type of
task in PS2007 timesheets. Even if you don't have the grouping setup, at the
end of the year I suggest companies go through their misc. charges and see if
they need a new Admin time type to better understand what is costing the
company how much money.

Dave
www.projectserverexplained.com