Tracking outside consultants work/effort with Generic Resources????

[Doug Barton]

Can anyone tell me the best way to track consultants' work within
Project Server Enterprise Resource Pool?

I have setup some Generic Resources such as "Generic Consultant" and
have resisted putting names to these Generic Resources because I
believe that Generic Resources are just that...generic and are
temporary placeholders until permanent resouces are assigned to the
project.

The problem that I'm having is a department within my company wants to
have NAMED generic resources such as "Microsoft Consultant", "ESP
Consultant", "Construction Consultant" etc to track the work that
consultants who are outside our company but have been hired to perform
work for us. These consultants do not need access to PS but the PM is
responsible for the work that they do, and such wants to have a NAMED
Generic Resource in the Enterprise Resource Pool.

I am resisting putting 100's of NAMED Generic Resources in the
resource pool as I can envision this list changing as well as a desire
to have multiple consultants from the same company, such as "Microsoft
Consultant1", "Microsoft Consultant2" etc.

Can someone let me know what their solution has been or if my thining
is off-track?

Thanks for your time.
Doug.

 

[Dale Howard]

Doug --

In a situation like yours, you might consider using local resources for your
outside contractors. Local resources are specific to each project, and are
not included in the Enterprise Resource Pool. Local resources are added to
a project by typing their name (or job title) in the Resource Sheet view of
any project. When you add a local resource to the Resource Sheet, you will
see a special icon indicating that they are local to the project.

Once you have added local resource(s) to your project, you can assign them
to tasks in the same manner as with enterprise resources. To avoid Spooler
errors when you publish your project, however, you should set the Workgroup
value to None for each local resource (do this by double-clicking the
resource). The work and cost data for each local resource can be tracked in
task and resource views in Microsoft Project while you have the project
open. Just an idea that might solve your problem. Hope this helps.